What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2022-23495: ProtoNode may be modified such that common method calls may panic in ipfs/go-merkledag
- Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 1.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2022-12-08 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-755
Description
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`](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/ipfs/go-block-format#Block) and [`github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-format#Node`](https://pkg.go.dev/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.
Affected products
- ipfs go-merkledag: from 0.4.0 before 0.8.1 — fixed in 0.8.1
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: ipfs go-merkledag 0.8.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_acyclic_graph
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/issues/90
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/pull/91
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/pull/92
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/pull/93
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/releases/tag/v0.8.0
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/releases/tag/v0.8.1
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/security/advisories/GHSA-x39j-h85h-3f46
- https://github.com/ipfs/kubo/issues/9297
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_acyclic_graph
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/issues/90
- https://github.com/ipfs/go-merkledag/pull/91
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