CVE-2026-48712: protobufjs: Denial of service through unbounded Any expansion during JSON conversion

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-06-22 · updated 2026-10-25
Weakness: CWE-674

Description

protobufjs compiles protobuf definitions into JavaScript (JS) functions. Prior to 7.6.1 and 8.4.1, 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. This vulnerability is fixed in 7.6.1 and 8.4.1.

Affected products

protobufjs: before 7.6.1; from 8.0.0 before 8.4.1 — fixed in 7.6.1, 8.4.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: protobufjs 7.6.1, 8.4.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://github.com/protobufjs/protobuf.js/security/advisories/GHSA-wcpc-wj8m-hjx6

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