GHSA-vmw2-qwm8-x84c is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) SQL Injection vulnerability in Marten. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-vmw2-qwm8-x84c is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Marten has an injection vulnerability in its full-text search regConfig parameter
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.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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-vmw2-qwm8-x84c.
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-vmw2-qwm8-x84c 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 0 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
MartenReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects NuGet packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
Marten's full-text search APIs interpolated the user-supplied regConfig parameter directly into the generated SQL without parameterization or validation, making every code path that exposes regConfig to untrusted input a SQL injection sink.
Affected APIs
IQuerySession.SearchAsync<T>(string searchTerm, string regConfig, ...)IQuerySession.PlainTextSearchAsync<T>(...)IQuerySession.PhraseSearchAsync<T>(...)IQuerySession.WebStyleSearchAsync<T>(...)IQuerySession.PrefixSearchAsync<T>(...)IQueryable<T>.Where(x => x.Search(term, regConfig))and the matchingPlainTextSearch/PhraseSearch/WebStyleSearch/PrefixSearchextension methods
Details
In the affected versions, FullTextWhereFragment renders the WHERE-clause SQL by string interpolation:
private string Sql =>
$"to_tsvector('{_regConfig}'::regconfig, {_dataConfig}) @@ {_searchFunction}('{_regConfig}'::regconfig, ?)";
_regConfig arrives unchanged from the public API surface above. Any value containing a single quote terminates the SQL literal and lets an attacker append arbitrary PostgreSQL.
Confirmed exploit shapes (with regConfig set to attacker-controlled input)
| Goal | Payload |
|---|---|
| Time-based blind | english'::text); SELECT pg_sleep(5); -- |
| Information disclosure | english'; SELECT version(); -- |
| DDL execution | english'; DROP TABLE mt_doc_article; -- |
All five overloads listed above produced SQL containing the verbatim payload.
Impact
- Confidentiality: an attacker can append arbitrary
SELECTstatements and exfiltrate database contents through error channels, response timing, or — if the application surfaces query results — directly. - Integrity / Availability: DDL,
UPDATE,DELETE, andpg_sleep-style denial-of-service payloads succeed under the same vector. Concrete impact depends on the database role used by the Marten connection string. - Precondition: the calling application must forward attacker-controlled input into the
regConfigparameter (e.g. a?lang=query string mapped toregConfig). Applications that hard-coderegConfigto a compile-time constant are not exploitable.
Patches
Fixed in Marten 8.36.1 (and forward) by #4343.
FullTextWhereFragment now validates regConfig against ^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*(\.[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*)?$ (a simple PostgreSQL identifier, optionally schema-qualified, capped at NAMEDATALEN-1 per side) and throws ArgumentException for anything else. The default value ("english"), schema-qualified configs ("pg_catalog.english"), and the standard PostgreSQL text-search configurations all continue to work.
Workarounds
If users cannot upgrade immediately, do one of the following at the application boundary:
- Hard-code
regConfigto a compile-time constant ("english","simple", …) and never accept it from request input. - Validate any externally-sourced
regConfigvalue before passing it to Marten — e.g. against the same regex as the patch (^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*(\.[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*)?$) or against an allowlist of PostgreSQL configurations the application actually uses. - Drop the
regConfigargument from the call site so Marten falls back to the safe default.
Resources
- Patch PR: JasperFx/marten#4343
- Patched file:
FullTextWhereFragment.cs - Regression tests:
full_text_regconfig_sql_injection.cs - CWE-89: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/89.html
Credit
Reported privately to the JasperFx team with a working proof of concept covering all five affected overloads.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| .NETNuGet | Marten | all versions | 8.37.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for Marten. 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 Marten to 8.37.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-vmw2-qwm8-x84c 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-vmw2-qwm8-x84c 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-vmw2-qwm8-x84c. 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-vmw2-qwm8-x84c in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-vmw2-qwm8-x84c across NuGet dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.