How severe is GHSA-965c-763c-88jm?

GHSA-965c-763c-88jm has a CVSS score of 9.1/10, rated CRITICAL. Immediate patching is strongly recommended.

Which packages are affected by GHSA-965c-763c-88jm?

GHSA-965c-763c-88jm affects the following packages: better-auth (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix GHSA-965c-763c-88jm?

Update better-auth to 1.7.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-965c-763c-88jm is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect GHSA-965c-763c-88jm in my npm dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for better-auth, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

How do I mitigate GHSA-965c-763c-88jm if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.

Is GHSA-965c-763c-88jm actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for GHSA-965c-763c-88jm yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for GHSA-965c-763c-88jm?

GHSA-965c-763c-88jm has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 0.3%, placing it in the 25th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is GHSA-965c-763c-88jm?

GHSA-965c-763c-88jm is classified as Improper Authentication (CWE-287). This weakness type describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation.

When was GHSA-965c-763c-88jm published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-965c-763c-88jm was published on October 27, 2026 and was last updated on October 27, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

📦

📦 npm

Not in CISA KEV

CRITICAL severity

better-auth: OAuth state can be used as a Magic Link to sign in as another userGHSA-965c-763c-88jm

CRITICALFix: better-auth/better-auth#11494

GHSA-965c-763c-88jm is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) Improper Authentication vulnerability in better-auth. A fix is available for better-auth — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Also known asCVE-2026-110862 CVE-2026-114607

Published

Oct 27, 2026

Updated

Oct 27, 2026

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

1 / 1

Exploits

None indexed

Exploitation data as of Oct 26, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

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-965c-763c-88jm.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

0.3%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk0.00%

Lower risk than most CVEs25th percentile — riskier than 25% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

GHSA-965c-763c-88jm by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 396,966 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected

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.

894other npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream

better-authnpm

11.3Mdownloads / week

Description

Am I affected?

You may be affected if you use better-auth from 1.4.0-beta.18 through versions before 1.7.7 with the Magic Link plugin and social or Generic OAuth sign-in.

You are affected if all of these are true:

Magic Link is enabled with default storeToken: "plain", or with storeToken: "hashed" and global verification.storeIdentifier: "hashed" (including a hashed default).
At least one built-in social provider or Generic OAuth provider is enabled.
OAuth state uses account.storeStateStrategy: "database", the default when a database or secondary storage is configured.

Cookie-backed state blocks this path, subject to the OAuth Proxy condition below. With custom hashers, confirm the flows cannot resolve to the same stored identifier.

Summary

Better Auth accepts an OAuth sign-in state value as a Magic Link token. An attacker can start an OAuth sign-in with any email address and use the returned state value to finish a Magic Link sign-in for that address. They never prove that they can read that email.

Impact

An unauthenticated attacker who knows a user's email address can get a normal session for that user, with all of that account's permissions. They need no access to the mailbox, and they do not need to sign in with the OAuth provider or complete an OAuth callback.

If Magic Link sign-up is enabled and no user has the email address, the attacker can instead create an account that Better Auth wrongly marks as email verified, and is signed in to it. The false verified-email flag can also bypass Better Auth's default unproven-account protections when the mailbox owner later signs in, leaving the attacker's session in that account. Applications that trust verified email addresses or email domains may give this account more access, depending on the application.

Patches

The fix is merged for the planned better-auth 1.7.7 release. That package is not available yet.

Upgrade better-auth and installed Better Auth adapters, plugins, and integrations released alongside it together. Upgrade servers sharing verification storage in the same cutover. Request new Magic Links and restart pending OAuth or SAML sign-ins; links and state created before the upgrade cannot complete. Update custom verification.storeIdentifier.overrides rules to match the magic-link: and auth-state: prefixes. There is no user or account data migration, and public token values and API signatures are unchanged.

Workarounds

Until you upgrade to the fixed release, use one of these mitigations:

Set account.storeStateStrategy to "cookie". If you also use OAuth Proxy, first configure one dedicated OAuth Proxy secret across all participating environments that differs from each environment's global Better Auth secret. Cookie-backed state can expose a separate OAuth Proxy account-takeover path when the proxy shares the global secret and implicit account linking is enabled.
Set the Magic Link plugin option storeToken to "hashed" and leave global verification.storeIdentifier unset or set it to "plain". Global identifier hashing does not prevent this issue when Magic Link tokens are also hashed.
Turn off Magic Link sign-in, or turn off social and Generic OAuth sign-in.

Setting disableSignUp: true on the Magic Link plugin is not enough. It only stops the creation of new verified accounts. It does not stop the takeover of existing accounts.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`better-auth`	≥ 1.4.0-beta.18&&< 1.7.7	1.7.7`npm install better-auth@1.7.7`

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for better-auth, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update better-auth to 1.7.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-965c-763c-88jm is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.

Frequently Asked Questions

## Am I affected? You may be affected if you use `better-auth` from `1.4.0-beta.18` through versions before `1.7.7` with the Magic Link plugin and social or Generic OAuth sign-in. You are affected if **all** of these are true: - Magic Link is enabled with default `storeToken: "plain"`, or with `storeToken: "hashed"` and global `verification.storeIdentifier: "hashed"` (including a hashed default). - At least one built-in social provider or Generic OAuth provider is enabled. - OAuth state uses `account.storeStateStrategy: "database"`, the default when a database or secondary storage is config