How severe is GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79?

GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 has a CVSS score of 5.3/10, rated MEDIUM. Review your exposure and patch according to your risk tolerance.

Which packages are affected by GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79?

GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 affects the following packages: joi (npm), joi (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79?

Update joi to 18.2.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 in my npm dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for joi, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

How do I mitigate GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.

Is GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79?

GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 0.5%, placing it in the 44th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79?

GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 is classified as CWE-248 (CWE-248). This weakness type describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation.

When was GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 was published on June 11, 2026 and was last updated on September 10, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

📦

📦 npm

Not in CISA KEV

MEDIUM severity

joi has an uncaught RangeError on deeply nested input through recursive `link()` schemasGHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79

MEDIUMFix: hapijs/joi#3113

GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-248 vulnerability in joi. A fix is available for joi — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Also known asCVE-2026-48038

Published

Jun 11, 2026

Updated

Sep 10, 2026

Affected

2 pkgs

Patched

2 / 2

Exploits

None indexed

Exploitation data as of Oct 25, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

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-q7cg-457f-vx79.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

0.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk0.00%

Lower risk than most CVEs44th percentile — riskier than 44% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

2 pkgs affected

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.

14Kother npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream

joinpm

15.7Mdownloads / week

Description

Impact

Denial of service via untrapped exception in services validating user-supplied JSON / object input with recursive link schemas.

The blast radius depends on how the application invokes joi:

Highest impact: validate() called without try/catch in a request handler would cause an unhandled exception, potentially crashing the process.
Lower impact: validateAsync() or validate() inside a try/catch, the validation fails, but the error type is RangeError rather than a structured ValidationError, complicating error handling.

Patches

Upgrade to version >= 18.2.1.

Workarounds

Try/catch the validation to avoid uncaught exceptions.

References

Pull request: hapijs/joi#3113

Affected Packages

2 total 2 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`joi`	≥ 18.0.0&&< 18.2.1	18.2.1`npm install joi@18.2.1`
📦npm	`joi`	all versions	17.13.4`npm install joi@17.13.4`

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for joi, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update joi to 18.2.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.

Fixing This On Your OS

If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.

Red HatModerate

A flaw was found in joi, a data validation library for JavaScript. Deeply nested input validated against recursive link() schemas triggers an uncaught RangeError that can crash the process when validate() is called without try/catch, leading to denial of service.

Workaround published by Red Hat

Upgrade to joi 17.13.4 or 18.2.1. As a workaround, wrap validate() calls in try/catch to prevent uncaught exceptions from crashing the process.

Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-q7cg-457f-vx79 (CC BY 4.0)

Frequently Asked Questions

### Impact Denial of service via untrapped exception in services validating user-supplied JSON / object input with recursive link schemas. The blast radius depends on how the application invokes joi: - Highest impact: `validate()` called without `try/catch` in a request handler would cause an unhandled exception, potentially crashing the process. - Lower impact: `validateAsync()` or `validate()` inside a `try/catch`, the validation fails, but the error type is `RangeError` rather than a structured `ValidationError`, complicating error handling. ### Patches Upgrade to version >= 18.2.1. ###