GHSA-685m-2w69-288q
HIGHGHSA-685m-2w69-288q is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-674 vulnerability in protobufjs. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-685m-2w69-288q is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
protobuf.js: Denial of service through unbounded protobuf recursion
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-685m-2w69-288q.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-685m-2w69-288q plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 356,665 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
protobufjsnpmDescription
Summary
protobufjs could recurse without a depth limit while decoding nested protobuf data. This affected both skipping unknown group fields and generated decoding of nested message fields.
A crafted protobuf binary payload could cause the JavaScript call stack to be exhausted during decoding.
Impact
An attacker who can provide protobuf binary data decoded by an application may be able to crash the process or otherwise cause decoding to fail with a stack overflow.
This affects applications that decode untrusted protobuf binary input with affected versions.
Preconditions
- The application must decode protobuf binary data influenced by an attacker.
- The crafted input must contain deeply nested protobuf structures, such as nested group tags or nested message fields.
- The affected decoder path must process the crafted input.
Workarounds
Avoid decoding untrusted protobuf binary data with affected versions. If immediate upgrade is not possible, reject excessively nested messages at an outer protocol boundary where feasible, or isolate protobuf decoding in a process that can be safely restarted.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | protobufjs | all versions | 7.5.6 |
| 📦npm | protobufjs | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.0.2 | 8.0.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for protobufjs. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update protobufjs to 7.5.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-685m-2w69-288q is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-685m-2w69-288q is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-685m-2w69-288q. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
An uncontrolled recursion vulnerability was discovered in protobufjs which can allow a remote attacker to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) via stack exhaustion. Red Hat products bundling vulnerable instances of this npm package (specifically versions prior to 7.5.6 and 8.0.2) are affected.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-685m-2w69-288q in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-685m-2w69-288q across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.