GHSA-whqg-ppgf-wp8c is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-647 vulnerability in astro. A fix is available for astro — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Astro has an Authentication Bypass via Double URL Encoding, a bypass for CVE-2025-64765
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-whqg-ppgf-wp8c.
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-whqg-ppgf-wp8c 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
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.
astronpmDescription
Authentication Bypass via Double URL Encoding in Astro
Bypass for CVE-2025-64765 / GHSA-ggxq-hp9w-j794
Summary
A double URL encoding bypass allows any unauthenticated attacker to bypass path-based authentication checks in Astro middleware, granting unauthorized access to protected routes. While the original CVE-2025-64765 (single URL encoding) was fixed in v5.15.8, the fix is insufficient as it only decodes once. By using double-encoded URLs like /%2561dmin instead of /%61dmin, attackers can still bypass authentication and access protected resources such as /admin, /api/internal, or any route protected by middleware pathname checks.
Fix
A more secure fix is just decoding once, then if the request has a %xx format, return a 400 error by using something like :
if (containsEncodedCharacters(pathname)) {
// Multi-level encoding detected - reject request
return new Response(
'Bad Request: Multi-level URL encoding is not allowed',
{
status: 400,
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' }
}
);
}
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | astro | all versions | 5.15.8npm install astro@5.15.8 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for astro, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update astro to 5.15.8 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-whqg-ppgf-wp8c 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-whqg-ppgf-wp8c can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-whqg-ppgf-wp8c. 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-whqg-ppgf-wp8c in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-whqg-ppgf-wp8c across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.