Loading HuntDB...

GHSA-8gq9-2x98-w8hf

GitHub Security Advisory

protobuf-cpp and protobuf-python have potential Denial of Service issue

✓ GitHub Reviewed HIGH Has CVE

Advisory Details

### Summary

A message parsing and memory management vulnerability in ProtocolBuffer’s C++ and Python implementations can trigger an out of memory (OOM) failure when processing a specially crafted message, which could lead to a denial of service (DoS) on services using the libraries.

Reporter: [ClusterFuzz](https://google.github.io/clusterfuzz/)

Affected versions: All versions of C++ Protobufs (including Python) prior to the versions listed below.

### Severity & Impact
As scored by google
**Medium 5.7** - [CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H](https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.1#CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)
Asscored byt NIST
**High 7.5** - [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H](https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.1#CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)

A small (~500 KB) malicious payload can be constructed which causes the running service to allocate more than 3GB of RAM.

### Proof of Concept

For reproduction details, please refer to the unit test that identifies the specific inputs that exercise this parsing weakness.

### Mitigation / Patching

Please update to the latest available versions of the following packages:
- protobuf-cpp (3.18.3, 3.19.5, 3.20.2, 3.21.6)
- protobuf-python (3.18.3, 3.19.5, 3.20.2, 4.21.6)

Affected Packages

PyPI protobuf
Affected versions: 0 (fixed in 3.18.3)
PyPI protobuf
Affected versions: 3.19.0 (fixed in 3.19.5)
PyPI protobuf
Affected versions: 3.20.0 (fixed in 3.20.2)
PyPI protobuf
Affected versions: 4.0.0 (fixed in 4.21.6)

Related CVEs

Key Information

GHSA ID
GHSA-8gq9-2x98-w8hf
Published
September 23, 2022 8:31 PM
Last Modified
July 5, 2024 9:23 PM
CVSS Score
7.5 /10
Primary Ecosystem
PyPI
Primary Package
protobuf
GitHub Reviewed
✓ Yes

Dataset

Last updated: July 6, 2025 6:30 AM

Data from GitHub Advisory Database. This information is provided for research and educational purposes.