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CVE-2022-23495

ProtoNode may be modified such that common method calls may panic in ipfs/go-merkledag

7.5 HighFix available

go-merkledag implements the 'DAGService' interface and adds two ipld node types, Protobuf and Raw for the ipfs project. A ProtoNode may be modified in such a way as to cause various encode errors which will trigger a panic on common method calls that don't allow for error returns. A ProtoNode should only be able to encode to valid DAG-PB, attempting to encode invalid DAG-PB forms will result in an error from the codec. Manipulation of an existing (newly created or decoded) ProtoNode using the modifier methods did not account for certain states that would place the ProtoNode into an unencodeable form. Due to conformance with the github.com/ipfs/go-block-format#Block and github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-format#Node interfaces, certain methods, which internally require a re-encode if state has changed, will panic due to the inability to return an error. This issue has been addressed across a number of pull requests. Users are advised to upgrade to version 0.8.1 for a complete set of fixes. Users unable to upgrade may attempt to mitigate this issue by sanitising inputs when allowing user-input to set a new CidBuilder on a ProtoNode and by sanitising Tsize (Link#Size) values such that they are a reasonable byte-size for sub-DAGs where derived from user-input.

Attack profile

How easy it is to exploit

Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges needed
None
User interaction
None

What an attacker can affect

Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

Exploit likelihood

1.38%Down 0.2 points since Dec 9, 2022
90%50%10%1%

What each source reports

CVE List Score used 7.5

ProtoNode may be modified such that common method calls may panic in ipfs/go-merkledag

go-merkledag implements the 'DAGService' interface and adds two ipld node types, Protobuf and Raw for the ipfs project. A ProtoNode may be modified in such a way as to cause various encode errors which will trigger a panic on common method calls that don't allow for error returns. A ProtoNode should only be able to encode to valid DAG-PB, attempting to encode invalid DAG-PB forms will result in an error from the codec. Manipulation of an existing (newly created or decoded) ProtoNode using the modifier methods did not account for certain states that would place the ProtoNode into an unencodeable form. Due to conformance with the github.com/ipfs/go-block-format#Block and github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-format#Node interfaces, certain methods, which internally require a re-encode if state has changed, will panic due to the inability to return an error. This issue has been addressed across a number of pull requests. Users are advised to upgrade to version 0.8.1 for a complete set of fixes. Users unable to upgrade may attempt to mitigate this issue by sanitising inputs when allowing user-input to set a new CidBuilder on a ProtoNode and by sanitising Tsize (Link#Size) values such that they are a reasonable byte-size for sub-DAGs where derived from user-input.

Record
CVE-2022-23495
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-755
Updated
2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2022-7766 7.5

go-merkledag implements the 'DAGService' interface and adds two ipld node types, Protobuf and Raw for the ipfs project. A ProtoNode may be modified in such a way as to cause various encode errors which will trigger a panic on common method calls that don't allow for error returns. A ProtoNode should only be able to encode to valid DAG-PB, attempting to encode invalid DAG-PB forms will result in an error from the codec. Manipulation of an existing (newly created or decoded) ProtoNode using the modifier methods did not account for certain states that would place the ProtoNode into an unencodeable form. Due to conformance with the github.com/ipfs/go-block-format#Block and github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-format#Node interfaces, certain methods, which internally require a re-encode if state has changed, will panic due to the inability to return an error. This issue has been addressed across a number of pull requests. Users are advised to upgrade to version 0.8.1 for a complete set of fixes. Users unable to upgrade may attempt to mitigate this issue by sanitising inputs when allowing user-input to set a new CidBuilder on a ProtoNode and by sanitising Tsize (Link#Size) values such that they are a reasonable byte-size for sub-DAGs where derived from user-input.

Record
EUVD-2022-7766
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-x39j-h85h-3f46 7.5

go-merkledag's ProtoNode may be modified such that common method calls may panic

Impact

A ProtoNode may be modified in such a way as to cause various encode errors which will trigger a panic on common method calls that don't allow for error returns.

A ProtoNode should only be able to encode to valid DAG-PB, attempting to encode invalid DAG-PB forms will result in an error from the codec. Manipulation of an existing (newly created or decoded) ProtoNode using the modifier methods did not account for certain states that would place the ProtoNode into an unencodeable form.

Due to conformance with the github.com/ipfs/go-block-format#Block and github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-format#Node interfaces, certain methods, which internally require a re-encode if state has changed, will panic due to the inability to return an error.

Additionally, use of the ProtoNode#SetCidBuilder() method to set a non-functioning CidBuilder (such as one that refers to a multihash where an implementation of that hash function is not available) may cause the same methods to panic as a new CID is required but cannot be created.

Patches

Releases involving fixes for this issue are v0.8.0 and v0.8.1. The recommended minimum version is v0.8.1.

  • Additional checks are performed on ProtoNode state changes to avoid the possibility of creating unencodeable forms, errors are returned where this is the case.
  • The builder passed in to SetCidBuilder() is inspected to attempt to determine if it is usable to generate CIDs, otherwise an error is returned.
  • The panics have been removed and replaced with default values (empty byte slice for RawData() and a default zero-bytes DAG-PB CID for methods involving CIDs).

Workarounds

These workarounds are available when using impacted versions to avoid panic conditions, and may be generally appropriate in order to provide meaningful feedback to users and avoid generating bad, or unexpected encoded data:

  • Sanitise inputs when allowing user-input to set a new CidBuilder on a ProtoNode.
  • Sanitise Tsize (Link#Size) values such that they are a reasonable byte-size for sub-DAGs where derived from user-input.

References

Credit

Thanks to @mrd0ll4r for reporting the original error to Kubo!

Record
GHSA-x39j-h85h-3f46
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-252, CWE-755
Updated
2026-11-02
NVD 7.5

go-merkledag implements the 'DAGService' interface and adds two ipld node types, Protobuf and Raw for the ipfs project. A ProtoNode may be modified in such a way as to cause various encode errors which will trigger a panic on common method calls that don't allow for error returns. A ProtoNode should only be able to encode to valid DAG-PB, attempting to encode invalid DAG-PB forms will result in an error from the codec. Manipulation of an existing (newly created or decoded) ProtoNode using the modifier methods did not account for certain states that would place the ProtoNode into an unencodeable form. Due to conformance with the github.com/ipfs/go-block-format#Block and github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-format#Node interfaces, certain methods, which internally require a re-encode if state has changed, will panic due to the inability to return an error. This issue has been addressed across a number of pull requests. Users are advised to upgrade to version 0.8.1 for a complete set of fixes. Users unable to upgrade may attempt to mitigate this issue by sanitising inputs when allowing user-input to set a new CidBuilder on a ProtoNode and by sanitising Tsize (Link#Size) values such that they are a reasonable byte-size for sub-DAGs where derived from user-input.

Record
CVE-2022-23495
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-755, CWE-252
Updated
2026-11-02
OSV 7.5

ProtoNode may be modified such that common method calls may panic in ipfs/go-merkledag

go-merkledag implements the 'DAGService' interface and adds two ipld node types, Protobuf and Raw for the ipfs project. A ProtoNode may be modified in such a way as to cause various encode errors which will trigger a panic on common method calls that don't allow for error returns. A ProtoNode should only be able to encode to valid DAG-PB, attempting to encode invalid DAG-PB forms will result in an error from the codec. Manipulation of an existing (newly created or decoded) ProtoNode using the modifier methods did not account for certain states that would place the ProtoNode into an unencodeable form. Due to conformance with the github.com/ipfs/go-block-format#Block and github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-format#Node interfaces, certain methods, which internally require a re-encode if state has changed, will panic due to the inability to return an error. This issue has been addressed across a number of pull requests. Users are advised to upgrade to version 0.8.1 for a complete set of fixes. Users unable to upgrade may attempt to mitigate this issue by sanitising inputs when allowing user-input to set a new CidBuilder on a ProtoNode and by sanitising Tsize (Link#Size) values such that they are a reasonable byte-size for sub-DAGs where derived from user-input.

Record
CVE-2022-23495
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-755
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVGHSA-x39j-h85h-3f46 7.5

go-merkledag's ProtoNode may be modified such that common method calls may panic

Impact

A ProtoNode may be modified in such a way as to cause various encode errors which will trigger a panic on common method calls that don't allow for error returns.

A ProtoNode should only be able to encode to valid DAG-PB, attempting to encode invalid DAG-PB forms will result in an error from the codec. Manipulation of an existing (newly created or decoded) ProtoNode using the modifier methods did not account for certain states that would place the ProtoNode into an unencodeable form.

Due to conformance with the github.com/ipfs/go-block-format#Block and github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-format#Node interfaces, certain methods, which internally require a re-encode if state has changed, will panic due to the inability to return an error.

Additionally, use of the ProtoNode#SetCidBuilder() method to set a non-functioning CidBuilder (such as one that refers to a multihash where an implementation of that hash function is not available) may cause the same methods to panic as a new CID is required but cannot be created.

Patches

Releases involving fixes for this issue are v0.8.0 and v0.8.1. The recommended minimum version is v0.8.1.

  • Additional checks are performed on ProtoNode state changes to avoid the possibility of creating unencodeable forms, errors are returned where this is the case.
  • The builder passed in to SetCidBuilder() is inspected to attempt to determine if it is usable to generate CIDs, otherwise an error is returned.
  • The panics have been removed and replaced with default values (empty byte slice for RawData() and a default zero-bytes DAG-PB CID for methods involving CIDs).

Workarounds

These workarounds are available when using impacted versions to avoid panic conditions, and may be generally appropriate in order to provide meaningful feedback to users and avoid generating bad, or unexpected encoded data:

  • Sanitise inputs when allowing user-input to set a new CidBuilder on a ProtoNode.
  • Sanitise Tsize (Link#Size) values such that they are a reasonable byte-size for sub-DAGs where derived from user-input.

References

Credit

Thanks to @mrd0ll4r for reporting the original error to Kubo!

Record
GHSA-x39j-h85h-3f46
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-252, CWE-755
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVGO-2022-1155 No score

Panic in github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag

A ProtoNode may be modified in such a way as to cause various encode errors which will trigger a panic on common method calls that don't allow for error returns.

Additionally, use of the ProtoNode.SetCidBuilder() method to set non-functioning CidBuilder (such as one that refers to a multihash where an implementation of that hash function is not available) may cause the same methods to panic as a new CID is required but cannot be created.

Record
GO-2022-1155
Updated
2026-11-02

Affected products

Affected packages

Affected packages
PackageAffectedFixed
github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag
Go
0.4.0 up to 0.8.1
0.8.1

History

History
RecordedChangedSources
first indexedCVE List, EUVD, GitHub Advisories, NVD, OSV

Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.

In short

CVE-2022-23495 is a high vulnerability (CVSS 7.5) in Ipfs Go-merkledag, published December 8, 2022. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 1.38%, the 72nd percentile. Fixed in github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag 0.8.1.

References

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