GHSA-pm3x-jrhh-qcr7 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in github.com/authzed/spicedb. A fix is available for github.com/authzed/spicedb — see the affected versions and patch details below.
SpiceDB WriteRelationships fails silently if payload is too big
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-pm3x-jrhh-qcr7.
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-pm3x-jrhh-qcr7 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
github.com/authzed/spicedbReal-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
SpiceDB is an open source database system for creating and managing security-critical application permissions. In versions prior to 1.45.2, users who use the exclusion operator somewhere in their authorization schema; have configured their SpiceDB server such that --write-relationships-max-updates-per-call is bigger than 6500; and issue calls to WriteRelationships with a large enough number of updates that cause the payload to be bigger than what their datastore allows; will receive a successful response from their WriteRelationships call, when in reality that call failed, and receive incorrect permission check results, if those relationships had to be read to resolve the relation involving the exclusion. Version 1.45.2 contains a patch for the issue. As a workaround, set --write-relationships-max-updates-per-call to 1000.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/authzed/spicedb | all versions | 1.45.2go get github.com/authzed/spicedb@v1.45.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/authzed/spicedb, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/authzed/spicedb to 1.45.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-pm3x-jrhh-qcr7 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-pm3x-jrhh-qcr7 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-pm3x-jrhh-qcr7. 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-pm3x-jrhh-qcr7 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-pm3x-jrhh-qcr7 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.