Elliptic Uses a Cryptographic Primitive with a Risky ImplementationGHSA-848j-6mx2-7j84
MEDIUMGHSA-848j-6mx2-7j84 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.6) CWE-1240 vulnerability in elliptic. The records list no fixed version yet; check the vendor advisory below and apply the mitigations in the meantime.
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-848j-6mx2-7j84.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
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.
ellipticnpmDescription
The ECDSA implementation of the Elliptic package generates incorrect signatures if an interim value of 'k' (as computed based on step 3.2 of RFC 6979 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6979 ) has leading zeros and is susceptible to cryptanalysis, which can lead to secret key exposure. This happens, because the byte-length of 'k' is incorrectly computed, resulting in its getting truncated during the computation. Legitimate transactions or communications will be broken as a result. Furthermore, due to the nature of the fault, attackers could–under certain conditions–derive the secret key, if they could get their hands on both a faulty signature generated by a vulnerable version of Elliptic and a correct signature for the same inputs.
This issue affects all known versions of Elliptic (at the time of writing, versions less than or equal to 6.6.1).
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | elliptic | all versions | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for elliptic, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
The records we use list no patched version of elliptic for GHSA-848j-6mx2-7j84. Check the maintainer's advisory, and where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range.
Mitigate without a patch
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.
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.
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-848j-6mx2-7j84 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-848j-6mx2-7j84 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.