GHSA-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Path Traversal vulnerability in @hapi/inert. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
@hapi/inert has a static-file confinement bypass via sibling-prefix path
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-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g.
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-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g 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 370,894 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
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.
@hapi/inertnpmDescription
Impact
@hapi/inert serves static files from a directory configured with path (in the directory / file handlers) or relativeTo (for h.file()), with confinement enforced by the confine option (default true). Before the patch, the confinement check compared the resolved absolute path against the confine directory using a raw string-prefix test, so a sibling directory whose absolute path begins with the same characters as the confine directory (eg. /app/static-secret next to a served /app/static) was incorrectly accepted as confined. An unauthenticated remote attacker who knows or guesses such a sibling name can read any file inside it via a request like /..%2fstatic-secret/secret.txt, provided the file is readable by the server process. Only applications that happen to have a sibling directory sharing a string prefix with the served directory are exploitable; applications with no such sibling are unaffected.
Patches
Upgrade to 7.1.1.
Workarounds
For users who cannot upgrade immediately: ensure the directory served via inert has no sibling whose name starts with the same characters (for example, rename static-secret/ to secret/, or move it to a different parent directory).
Resources
Pull Request: https://github.com/hapijs/inert/pull/176
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | @hapi/inert | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 7.1.1 | 7.1.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for @hapi/inert. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update @hapi/inert to 7.1.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g. 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-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-rcvq-m9j9-6f4g across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.