GHSA-87r5-mp6g-5w5j is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Code Injection vulnerability in jsonpath. A fix is available for jsonpath — see the affected versions and patch details below.
jsonpath has Arbitrary Code Injection via Unsafe Evaluation of JSON Path Expressions
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.
- 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-87r5-mp6g-5w5j.
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-87r5-mp6g-5w5j 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 378,156 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.
jsonpathnpmDescription
Impact
Arbitrary Code Injection (Remote Code Execution & XSS):
A critical security vulnerability affects all versions of the jsonpath package. The library relies on the static-eval module to evaluate JSON Path expressions but fails to properly sanitize or sandbox the input.
This allows an attacker to inject arbitrary JavaScript code into the JSON Path expression. When the library evaluates this expression, the malicious code is executed.
- Node.js Environments: This leads to Remote Code Execution (RCE), allowing an attacker to compromise the server.
- Browser Environments: This leads to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), allowing an attacker to hijack user sessions or exfiltrate data.
Affected Methods:
The vulnerability triggers when untrusted data is passed to any method that evaluates a path, including:
jsonpath.queryjsonpath.nodesjsonpath.pathsjsonpath.valuejsonpath.parentjsonpath.apply
Patches
No Patch Available:
Currently, all versions of jsonpath are vulnerable. There is no known patched version of this package that resolves the issue while retaining the current architecture.
Recommendation:
Developers are strongly advised to migrate to a secure alternative (such as jsonpath-plus or similar libraries that do not use eval/static-eval) or strictly validate all JSON Path inputs against a known allowlist.
Workarounds
- Strict Input Validation: Ensure that no user-supplied data is ever passed directly to
jsonpathfunctions. - Sanitization: If user input is unavoidable, implement a strict parser to reject any JSON Path expressions containing executable JavaScript syntax (e.g., parentheses
(), script expressionsscript:, or function calls).
Resources
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | jsonpath | all versions | 1.3.0npm install jsonpath@1.3.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for jsonpath, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update jsonpath to 1.3.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-87r5-mp6g-5w5j 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-87r5-mp6g-5w5j can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-87r5-mp6g-5w5j. 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.
Red Hat Product Security team has rated this vulnerability as Important as it may allows arbitrary code execution when processing untrusted JSON Path expressions. This can lead to Remote Code Execution in Node.js environments or Cross-site Scripting in browser contexts. In some contexts it may be possible to remotely…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 | ansible-automation-platform-25/lightspeed-rhel8:1774446874 | RHSA-2026:6308 |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 | ansible-automation-platform-26/lightspeed-rhel9:1787244079 | RHSA-2026:59155 |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 | ansible-automation-platform-26/lightspeed-rhel9:1774363040 | RHSA-2026:6309 |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 | ansible-automation-platform-26/lightspeed-rhel9:1774363040 | RHSA-2026:6404 |
| Red Hat Developer Hub 1.9 | rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9:1775140647 | RHSA-2026:6802 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-87r5-mp6g-5w5j in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-87r5-mp6g-5w5j across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.