GHSA-9q9c-vjxh-p795 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) vulnerability in cbor2. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-9q9c-vjxh-p795 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
cbor2 C extension decoder flaws can cause denial of service
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-9q9c-vjxh-p795.
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-9q9c-vjxh-p795 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 371,256 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
cbor2Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Multiple vulnerabilities exist in cbor2 through version 5.7.0 in the decode_definite_long_string() function of the C extension decoder (source/decoder.c):
- Integer Underflow Leading to Out-of-Bounds Read (CWE-191, CWE-125): An incorrect variable reference and missing state reset in the chunk processing loop causes buffer_length to not be reset to zero after UTF-8 character consumption. This results in subsequent chunk_length calculations producing negative values (e.g., chunk_length = 65536 - buffer_length), which are passed as signed integers to the read() method, potentially triggering unlimited read operations and resource exhaustion.
- Memory Leak via Missing Reference Count Release (CWE-401): The main processing loop fails to release Python object references (Py_DECREF) for chunk objects allocated in each iteration. For CBOR strings longer than 65536 bytes, this causes cumulative memory leaks proportional to the payload size, enabling memory exhaustion attacks through repeated processing of large CBOR payloads.
Both vulnerabilities can be exploited remotely without authentication by sending specially-crafted CBOR data containing definite-length text strings with multi-byte UTF-8 characters positioned at 65536-byte chunk boundaries. Successful exploitation results in denial of service through process crashes (CBORDecodeEOF exceptions) or memory exhaustion. The vulnerabilities affect all applications using cbor2's C extension to process untrusted CBOR data, including web APIs, IoT data collectors, and message queue processors. Fixed in commit 851473490281f82d82560b2368284ef33cf6e8f9 pushed with released version 5.7.1.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | cbor2 | all versions | 5.7.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for cbor2. 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 cbor2 to 5.7.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-9q9c-vjxh-p795 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-9q9c-vjxh-p795 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-9q9c-vjxh-p795. 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-9q9c-vjxh-p795 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-9q9c-vjxh-p795 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.