GHSA-ppjg-v974-84cm — go-ethereum
HIGHGHSA-ppjg-v974-84cm is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum. A fix is available for github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Go-Ethereum vulnerable to denial of service via malicious p2p message
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-ppjg-v974-84cm.
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-ppjg-v974-84cm 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/ethereum/go-ethereumReal-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
Impact
A vulnerable node, can be made to consume unbounded amounts of memory when handling specially crafted p2p messages sent from an attacker node.
Details
The p2p handler spawned a new goroutine to respond to ping requests. By flooding a node with ping requests, an unbounded number of goroutines can be created, leading to resource exhaustion and potentially crash due to OOM.
Patches
The fix is included in geth version 1.12.1-stable, i.e, 1.12.2-unstable and onwards.
Fixed by https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/pull/27887
Workarounds
No known workarounds.
Credits
This bug was reported by Patrick McHardy and reported via [email protected].
References
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum | all versions | 1.12.1-stablego get github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum@v1.12.1-stable |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum to 1.12.1-stable or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-ppjg-v974-84cm 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-ppjg-v974-84cm can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-ppjg-v974-84cm. 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-ppjg-v974-84cm in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-ppjg-v974-84cm across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.