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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2026-54270 json

protobufjs: Memory amplification from preserved unknown fields in binary decode

published 2026-06-15 4 mo ago modified 2026-10-25 14 d ago also GHSA-94rc-8x27-4472 , EUVD-2026-38305

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 34%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

protobufjs compiles protobuf definitions into JavaScript (JS) functions. From 8.2.0 to 8.4.2, protobufjs preserved unknown wire elements in message.$unknowns and did not provide a decode-time option to discard unknown fields before retaining them. A crafted protobuf payload containing many unknown fields could therefore cause a decoded message to retain substantially more memory than the input size would suggest, even when unknown-field round-tripping is not needed. protobufjs 8.5.0 added the relevant decode-time options, allowing applications that decode untrusted protobuf data to disable unknown-field retention during decode. protobufjs 8.6.2 flips the default so unknown fields are discarded unless explicitly opted into.

Patch / fix

  • npm protobufjs 8.5.0
  • protobufjs_project protobufjs 8.5.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-54270 updated cvss 5.3

protobufjs: protobufjs: Denial of Service due to excessive memory consumption

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI) 3 rhelai3/bootc-cuda-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-rocm-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-gaudi-rhel9, rhelai3/disk-image-cuda-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-dashboard-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-maas-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-automl-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-gen-ai-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-mlflow-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-autorag-rhel9, +2 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available “No specific mitigation required for unaffected runtime paths.”
  • Red Hat Cryostat 4 grafana-infinity-datasource-npm Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines openshift-pipelines/pipelines-console-plugin-rhel8, openshift-pipelines/pipelines-console-plugin-rhel9, openshift-pipelines/pipelines-console-plugin-pf5-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 3 openshift-service-mesh/kiali-rhel9, openshift-service-mesh/kiali-ossmc-rhel9 Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 automation-platform-ui, ansible-automation-platform-26/gateway-rhel9, ansible-automation-platform-27/gateway-rhel9 Red Hat Build of Podman Desktop rh-podman-desktop.git Red Hat Ceph Storage 9 rhceph/alloy-rhel10
    +7 more products
    Red Hat Developer Hub 1 rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 grafana, grafana-loki, grafana-mssql, grafana-mysql, grafana-selinux, grafana-graphite, +8 more Red Hat Hardened Images dotnet9.0 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift4/ose-console, openshift4/ose-console-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift5/ose-console-rhel9 Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4 odf4/mcg-core-rhel9 Red Hat Self-service automation portal 2 ansible-automation-platform/automation-portal, ansible-automation-platform/bootc-automation-portal-rhel9
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
4 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.40% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 34% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
GitHub 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm protobufjs
>=8.2.0, <8.5.0
8.5.0

Affected products

  • protobufjs protobuf.js

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.