GHSA-gcq9-qqwx-rgj3 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p. A fix is available for github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p — see the affected versions and patch details below.
libp2p nodes vulnerable to OOM attack
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-gcq9-qqwx-rgj3.
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-gcq9-qqwx-rgj3 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/libp2p/go-libp2pReal-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
Summary
In go-libp2p, by using signed peer records a malicious actor can store an arbitrary amount of data in a remote node’s memory. This memory does not get garbage collected and so the victim can run out of memory and crash.
It is feasible to do this at scale. An attacker would have to transfer ~1/2 as much memory it wants to occupy (2x amplification factor).
The attacker can perform this attack over time as the target node’s memory will not be garbage collected.
This can occur because when a signed peer record is received, only the signature validity check is performed but the sender signature is not checked. Signed peer records from randomly generated peers can be sent by a malicious actor. A target node will accept the peer record as long as the signature is valid, and then stored in the peer store.
There is cleanup logic in the peer store that cleans up data when a peer disconnects, but this cleanup is never triggered for the fake peer (from which signed peer records were accepted) because it was never “connected”.
Impact
If users of go-libp2p in production are not monitoring memory consumption over time, it could be a silent attack i.e. the attacker could bring down nodes over a period of time (how long depends on the node resources i.e. a go-libp2p node on a virtual server with 4 gb of memory takes about 90 sec to bring down; on a larger server, it might take a bit longer.)
Patches
Update your go-libp2p dependency to the latest release, v0.30.0 at the time of writing.
If you'd like to stay on the 0.27.x release, we strongly recommend users to update to go-libp2p 0.27.7. Though this OOM issue was fixed in 0.27.4, there were subsequent patch releases afterwards (important fixes for other issues unrelated to the OOM).
Workarounds
None
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p | all versions | 0.27.4go get github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p@v0.27.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p to 0.27.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-gcq9-qqwx-rgj3 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-gcq9-qqwx-rgj3 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-gcq9-qqwx-rgj3. 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-gcq9-qqwx-rgj3 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-gcq9-qqwx-rgj3 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.