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GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4 — cert-manager

Fix: cert-manager/cert-manager#7400

GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4 is a Improper Input Validation vulnerability in github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager. A fix is available for github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager — see the affected versions and patch details below.

cert-manager ha a potential slowdown / DoS when parsing specially crafted PEM inputs

Also known asCVE-2024-12401GO-2024-3282
Published
Nov 20, 2024
Updated
Sep 10, 2026
Affected
3 pkgs
Patched
3 / 3
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Sep 19, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

No confirmed exploitation observed yet

  • 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-r4pg-vg54-wxx4.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.7%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs51th percentile — riskier than 51% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

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.

Real-World Exposure

3 pkgs affected
🐹github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager🐹github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager🐹github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager

Real-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

cert-manager packages which call the standard library pem.Decode() function can take a long time to process specially crafted invalid PEM data.

If an attacker is able to modify PEM data which cert-manager reads (e.g. in a Secret resource), they may be able to use large amounts of CPU in the cert-manager controller pod to effectively create a denial-of-service (DoS) vector for cert-manager in the cluster.

Secrets are limited in size to 1MiB, which reduces the impact of this issue; it was discovered through an ~856kB fuzz test input which causes pem.Decode to take roughly 750ms to reject the input on an M2 Max Macbook Pro. By way of comparison, a valid PEM-encoded 4096-bit RSA key takes roughly 70µs to parse on the same machine.

Given the required size of PEM data needed to present a realistic DoS vector, an attacker would need to create or insert many different large sized resources in the cluster, and so the best secondary defense is to ensure that sensible limits are placed via RBAC.

This issue affects all versions of cert-manager to have been released since at least v0.1.0 (since pem.Decode is core functionality for cert-manager). All supported releases are patched.

Patches

The fixed versions are v1.16.2, v1.15.4 and v1.12.14.

Workarounds

Ensure that RBAC is scoped correctly in your cluster. If a user is able to modify resources containing PEM data to be able to exploit this, it's like that those permissions are a bigger security threat than this issue - especially for Secret resources.

References

Affected Packages

3 total 3 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐹Gogithub.com/cert-manager/cert-managerall versions1.12.14go get github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager@v1.12.14
🐹Gogithub.com/cert-manager/cert-manager≥ 1.13.0-alpha.0&&< 1.15.41.15.4go get github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager@v1.15.4
🐹Gogithub.com/cert-manager/cert-manager≥ 1.16.0-alpha.0&&< 1.16.21.16.2go get github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager@v1.16.2

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

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

  2. Fix

    Update github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager to 1.12.14 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. 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.

  4. How O3 protects you

    O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.

Tailored to GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Impact cert-manager packages which call the standard library `pem.Decode()` function can take a long time to process specially crafted invalid PEM data. If an attacker is able to modify PEM data which cert-manager reads (e.g. in a Secret resource), they may be able to use large amounts of CPU in the cert-manager controller pod to effectively create a denial-of-service (DoS) vector for cert-manager in the cluster. Secrets are limited in size to [1MiB](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/#restriction-data-size), which reduces the impact of this issue; it was discover
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4 in your dependencies?

O3 Security finds GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.

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GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4: cert-manager DoS | O3 Security