GHSA-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-460 vulnerability in github.com/anchore/syft. A fix is available for github.com/anchore/syft — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Syft improper temporary file cleanup
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-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc.
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-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc 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 377,636 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/anchore/syftReal-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
Syft is a a CLI tool and Go library for generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) from container images and filesystems. Syft versions before v1.42.3 would not properly cleanup temporary storage if the temporary storage was exhausted during a scan. When scanning archives Syft will unpack those archives into temporary storage then inspect the unpacked contents. Under normal operation Syft will remove the temporary data it writes after completing a scan. This vulnerability would affect users of Syft that were scanning content that could cause Syft to fill the temporary storage that would then cause Syft to raise an error and exit. When the error is triggered Syft would exit without properly removing the temporary files in use. In our testing this was most easily reproduced by scanning very large artifacts or highly compressed artifacts such as a zipbomb. Because Syft would not clean up its temporary files, the result would be filling temporary file storage preventing future runs of Syft or other system utilities that rely on temporary storage being available. The patch has been released in v1.42.3. Syft now cleans up temporary files when an error condition is encountered. There are no workarounds for this vulnerability in Syft. Users that find their temporary storage depleted can manually remove the temporary files.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/anchore/syft | all versions | 1.42.3go get github.com/anchore/syft@v1.42.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/anchore/syft, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/anchore/syft to 1.42.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc 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-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc. 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-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.