PocketMine-MP allows malicious client data to waste server resources due to lack of limits for explode()GHSA-g274-c6jj-h78p
MEDIUMFix: pmmp/PocketMine-MP@d0d84d4GHSA-g274-c6jj-h78p is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in pocketmine/pocketmine-mp. A fix is available for pocketmine/pocketmine-mp — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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-g274-c6jj-h78p.
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
pocketmine/pocketmine-mpReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
Due to lack of limits by default in the explode() function, malicious clients were able to abuse some packets to waste server CPU and memory.
This is similar to a previous security issue published in https://github.com/pmmp/PocketMine-MP/security/advisories/GHSA-gj94-v4p9-w672, but with a wider impact, including but not limited to:
- Sign editing
- LoginPacket JWT parsing
- Command parsing
However, the estimated impact of these issues is low, due to other limits such as the packet decompression limit.
Patches
The issue was fixed in 5.25.2 via d0d84d4c5195fb0a68ea7725424fda63b85cd831.
A custom PHPStan rule has also been introduced to the project, which will henceforth require that all calls to explode() within the codebase must specify the limit parameter.
Workarounds
No simple way to fix this.
Given that sign editing is the easiest way this could be exploited, workarounds could include plugins pre-processing BlockActorDataPacket to check that the incoming text doesn't have more than 4 parts when split by \n.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | pocketmine/pocketmine-mp | all versions | 5.25.2composer require pocketmine/pocketmine-mp:^5.25.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pocketmine/pocketmine-mp, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update pocketmine/pocketmine-mp to 5.25.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-g274-c6jj-h78p is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-g274-c6jj-h78p in your dependencies?
Find it across Packagist, including transitive dependencies.