GHSA-hm8q-7f3q-5f36 — hono
LOWGHSA-hm8q-7f3q-5f36 is a low-severity (CVSS 3.8) CWE-1284 vulnerability in hono. A fix is available for hono — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Hono has improper validation of NumericDate claims (exp, nbf, iat) in JWT verify()
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-hm8q-7f3q-5f36.
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-hm8q-7f3q-5f36 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 379,145 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
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.
hononpmDescription
Summary
Improper validation of the JWT NumericDate claims exp, nbf, and iat in hono/utils/jwt allows tokens with non-spec-compliant claim values to silently bypass time-based checks. This issue is not exploitable by an anonymous attacker; it only manifests when a malformed claim value reaches verify() — typically when the application itself issues such tokens, or when the signing key is otherwise under attacker control.
Details
The validation routine combined option, presence, and threshold checks in a single short-circuiting expression, so several classes of malformed values were silently skipped instead of rejected:
- A falsy numeric value short-circuited the presence check.
- A non-finite numeric value compared as never-after-now and never-expired.
- A non-numeric type produced NaN comparisons that evaluated false.
This deviates from RFC 7519 §4.1.4, which defines NumericDate as a finite JSON numeric value.
Impact
An actor able to issue tokens accepted by the application may craft tokens whose exp, nbf, or iat claims silently bypass time-based enforcement. This may lead to:
- Tokens treated as never expiring even with
expconfigured on the verifier. - Tokens with a future
nbfaccepted as currently valid. - Tokens with a future
iataccepted as legitimately issued.
Deployments using a well-formed token issuer and protecting the signing key are not affected.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | hono | all versions | 4.12.18npm install hono@4.12.18 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for hono, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update hono to 4.12.18 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-hm8q-7f3q-5f36 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-hm8q-7f3q-5f36 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-hm8q-7f3q-5f36. 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-hm8q-7f3q-5f36 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-hm8q-7f3q-5f36 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.