GHSA-qrjv-rf5q-qpxc is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in websocket. A fix is available for websocket — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Rust-WebSocket memory allocation based on untrusted length
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-qrjv-rf5q-qpxc.
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-qrjv-rf5q-qpxc 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
websocketReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
Untrusted websocket connections can cause an out-of-memory (OOM) process abort in a client or a server.
The root cause of the issue is during dataframe parsing.
Affected versions would allocate a buffer based on the declared dataframe size, which may come from an untrusted source.
When Vec::with_capacity fails to allocate, the default Rust allocator will abort the current process, killing all threads. This affects only sync (non-Tokio) implementation. Async version also does not limit memory, but does not use with_capacity, so DoS can happen only when bytes for oversized dataframe or message actually got delivered by the attacker.
This is a security concern for you, if
- your server application handles untrusted websocket connections
- OR your client application connects to untrusted websocket servers
Patches
The crashes are fixed in version 0.26.5 by imposing default dataframe size limits. Affected users are advised to update to this version.
Note that default memory limits are rather large (100MB dataframes and 200 MB messages), so they can still cause DoS in some environments (i.e. 32-bit). New API has been added to fine tune those limits for specific applications.
Workarounds
- Migrate your project to another, maintained Websocket library like Tungstenite.
- Accept only trusted WebSocket traffic.
- Filter the WebSocket traffic though some kind of proxy that ensures sanity limits on messages.
- Handle process aborts gracefully and limit process memory using OS tools.
Credits
This issue was reported by Evan Richter at ForAllSecure and found with Mayhem and Cargo Fuzz.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | websocket | all versions | 0.26.5cargo update -p websocket --precise 0.26.5 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for websocket, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update websocket to 0.26.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-qrjv-rf5q-qpxc 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-qrjv-rf5q-qpxc can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-qrjv-rf5q-qpxc. 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-qrjv-rf5q-qpxc in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-qrjv-rf5q-qpxc across crates.io dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.