GHSA-m2v9-w374-5hj9 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-667 vulnerability in vyper. A fix is available for vyper — see the affected versions and patch details below.
vyper default functions don't respect nonreentrancy keys
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-m2v9-w374-5hj9.
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-m2v9-w374-5hj9 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 377,238 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
vyperReal-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
Summary
Prior to v0.3.0, __default__() functions did not respect the @nonreentrancy decorator and the lock was not emitted. This is a known bug and was already visible in the issue tracker (https://github.com/vyperlang/vyper/issues/2455), but it is being re-issued as an advisory so that tools relying on the advisory publication list can incorporate it into their searches.
A contract search was additionally performed and no vulnerable contracts were found in production.
PoC
@external
@payable
@nonreentrant("default")
def __default__():
pass
after codegen:
[seq,
[if, [lt, calldatasize, 4], [goto, fallback]],
[mstore, 28, [calldataload, 0]],
[with, _func_sig, [mload, 0], seq],
[seq_unchecked,
[label, fallback],
[seq,
pass,
# Line 5
pass,
pass,
# Line 4
stop]]],
Impact
No vulnerable production contracts were found. Additionally, using a lock on a default function is a very sparsely used pattern. As such, the impact is low.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | vyper | all versions | 0.3.0pip install --upgrade 'vyper==0.3.0' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for vyper, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update vyper to 0.3.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-m2v9-w374-5hj9 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-m2v9-w374-5hj9 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-m2v9-w374-5hj9. 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-m2v9-w374-5hj9 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-m2v9-w374-5hj9 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.