🛡️ CVE-2026-48712 — protobufjs

🟠 CVSS 8.0 — High ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-674 OSV
8.0
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

protobufjs: Denial of service through unbounded Any expansion during JSON conversion

Summary

protobufjs could recurse without a depth limit while converting decoded messages to plain objects or JSON. This affected generated toObject() conversion and the custom google.protobuf.Any JSON conversion path.

A crafted protobuf binary payload containing deeply nested Any values could cause the JavaScript call stack to be exhausted during conversion to JSON.

Impact

An attacker who can provide protobuf binary data decoded by an application may be able to crash the process or otherwise cause message conversion to fail with a stack overflow.

This affects applications that decode untrusted protobuf input containing google.protobuf.Any values and then convert decoded messages to JSON or plain objects with JSON conversion enabled, for example through JSON.stringify(message), Message#toJSON(), or Type.toObject(message, { json: true }).

Applications that only decode and re-encode protobuf binary data without converting decoded messages to JSON are not directly affected by this issue.

Preconditions

  • The application must decode protobuf binary data influenced by an attacker.
  • The application schema must include google.protobuf.Any, and the referenced type_url must resolve to a message type in the loaded protobuf root.
  • The application must convert the decoded message to JSON or a plain object through an affected conversion path.
  • The crafted input must contain deeply nested Any values that are expanded during conversion.

Workarounds

Avoid converting untrusted protobuf messages containing google.protobuf.Any values to JSON with affected versions. If immediate upgrade is not possible, reject or limit messages with deeply nested Any payloads at an outer protocol boundary where feasible, avoid JSON conversion of untrusted Any values, or isolate message conversion in a process that can be safely restarted.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity none, availability high.

Affected software

CVE-2026-48712 is recorded against 1 package.

  • protobufjs

Timeline and source

Published on 15 June 2026 and last revised on 15 July 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

github.com (Web)
nvd.nist.gov (Advisory)
github.com (Package)

Details

Severity HIGH
CVSS Score 8.0
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE CWE-674
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2026-06-15
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-07-15
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
protobufjs — —

Site Security Check

Is protobufjs part of your stack?

CVE-2026-48712 is rated CVSS 8.0 High. BotEraser scans your installation against known CVE records and tells you whether this vulnerability applies to the versions you actually run.

Scan My Site Free →

No credit card required  ·  Results in minutes

ⓘ Data Notice: The information presented above has been compiled from publicly available internet sources. Boteraser aggregates this data solely for informational purposes and does not independently classify, evaluate, or endorse any findings about the vulnerabilities listed. The accuracy and completeness of this information is the sole responsibility of the original publishers. Boteraser and its operators accept no liability for any decisions made based on this data.