GHSA-75px-5xx7-5xc7 — protobufjs
HIGHGHSA-75px-5xx7-5xc7 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.1) Code Injection vulnerability in protobufjs. A fix is available for protobufjs — see the affected versions and patch details below.
protobuf.js: Code generation gadget after prototype pollution
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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-75px-5xx7-5xc7.
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-75px-5xx7-5xc7 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 379,145 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 used plain objects with inherited prototypes for internal type lookup tables used by generated encode and decode functions. If Object.prototype had already been polluted, those lookup tables could resolve attacker-controlled inherited properties as valid protobuf type information.
This could cause attacker-controlled strings to be emitted into generated JavaScript code.
Impact
An attacker who can first trigger a prototype pollution vulnerability may be able to influence generated protobufjs encode or decode functions in a way that can lead to arbitrary JavaScript execution.
This issue requires a separate prototype pollution primitive before protobufjs is invoked.
Applications without a reachable prototype pollution primitive are not directly exploitable through this issue alone.
Preconditions
- The application or one of its dependencies must allow an attacker to pollute
Object.prototype. - The polluted property must affect protobufjs internal type lookup behavior.
- The application must use protobufjs functionality that generates encode or decode code for affected types.
- The generated code path must be reached after the prototype pollution has occurred.
Workarounds
Avoid running affected versions in applications where attacker-controlled input can pollute Object.prototype. If immediate upgrade is not possible, remove or mitigate reachable prototype pollution primitives and isolate schema/message processing from untrusted application state.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | protobufjs | all versions | 7.5.6npm install protobufjs@7.5.6 |
| 📦npm | protobufjs | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.0.2 | 8.0.2npm install protobufjs@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, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update protobufjs to 7.5.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-75px-5xx7-5xc7 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-75px-5xx7-5xc7 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-75px-5xx7-5xc7. 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.
This Important flaw in protobufjs, a JavaScript library, potentially enables arbitrary code execution when a separate prototype pollution vulnerability is present in an application. Exploitation requires an attacker to first pollute `Object.prototype` and then trigger protobufjs functionality that generates encode or…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Cryostat 4 on RHEL 9 | cryostat/cryostat-grafana-dashboard-rhel9:4.2.0-13 | RHSA-2026:48151 |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.2 | ansible-automation-platform/automation-portal:1784622951 | RHSA-2026:42815 |
| Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.4 | rhoai/odh-dashboard-rhel9:1787347991 | RHSA-2026:60520 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-75px-5xx7-5xc7 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-75px-5xx7-5xc7 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.