GHSA-87x9-7grx-m28v is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in github.com/notaryproject/notation-go. A fix is available for github.com/notaryproject/notation-go — see the affected versions and patch details below.
notation-go has excessive memory allocation on verification
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-87x9-7grx-m28v.
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-87x9-7grx-m28v 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 377,166 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
github.com/notaryproject/notation-goReal-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
notation-go users will find their application using excessive memory when verifying signatures and the application will be finally killed, and thus availability is impacted.
Patches
The problem has been patched in the release v1.0.0-rc.3. Users should upgrade their notation-go packages to v1.0.0-rc.3 or above.
Workarounds
Users can review their own trust policy file and check if the identity string contains =#. Meanwhile, users should only put trusted certificates in their trust stores referenced by their own trust policy files, and make sure the authenticity validation is set to enforce
Credits
The notation-go project would like to thank Adam Korczynski (@AdamKorcz) for responsibly disclosing this issue during a security fuzzing audit sponsored by CNCF and Shiwei Zhang (@shizhMSFT) for root cause analysis and detailed vulnerability report.
References
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/notaryproject/notation-go | all versions | 1.0.0-rc.3go get github.com/notaryproject/notation-go@v1.0.0-rc.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/notaryproject/notation-go, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/notaryproject/notation-go to 1.0.0-rc.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-87x9-7grx-m28v 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-87x9-7grx-m28v can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-87x9-7grx-m28v. 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-87x9-7grx-m28v in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-87x9-7grx-m28v across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.