GHSA-7rg2-cxvp-9p7p
MEDIUMPrometheus Exporter-Toolkit is vulnerable to authentication bypass
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.
Blast Radius
github.com/prometheus/exporter-toolkit🐹github.com/prometheus/exporter-toolkitReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
Prometheus and its exporters can be secured by a web.yml file that specifies usernames and hashed passwords for basic authentication.
Passwords are hashed with bcrypt, which means that even if you have access to the hash, it is very hard to find the original password back.
However, a flaw in the way this mechanism was implemented in the exporter toolkit makes it possible with people who know the hashed password to authenticate against Prometheus.
A request can be forged by an attacker to poison the internal cache used to cache the computation of hashes and make subsequent requests successful. This cache is used in both happy and unhappy scenarios in order to limit side channel attacks that could tell an attacker if a user is present in the file or not.
Patches
The exporter-toolkit v0.7.3 and v0.8.2 have been released to address this issue.
Workarounds
There is no workaround but attacker must have access to the hashed password, stored in disk, to bypass the authentication.
Credit
We want to thank Lei Wan reporting this security issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/prometheus/exporter-toolkit | all versions | 0.7.2 |
| 🐹Go | github.com/prometheus/exporter-toolkit | ≥ 0.8.0&&< 0.8.2 | 0.8.2 |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/prometheus/exporter-toolkit. 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 github.com/prometheus/exporter-toolkit to 0.7.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-7rg2-cxvp-9p7p 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-7rg2-cxvp-9p7p 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-7rg2-cxvp-9p7p. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-7rg2-cxvp-9p7p in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-7rg2-cxvp-9p7p across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.