GHSA-554w-wpv2-vw27 CVE-2025-66031
node-forge has ASN.1 Unbounded Recursion
- Severity
- 0.0 / 10
- High · CVSS 4.0
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 0.45%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 38.78% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-674 Uncontrolled Recursion
- Fix
1.3.2- Upgrade node-forge to this version or later
Description
Summary
An Uncontrolled Recursion (CWE-674) vulnerability in node-forge versions 1.3.1 and below enables remote, unauthenticated attackers to craft deep ASN.1 structures that trigger unbounded recursive parsing. This leads to a Denial-of-Service (DoS) via stack exhaustion when parsing untrusted DER inputs.
Details
An ASN.1 Denial of Service (Dos) vulnerability exists in the node-forge asn1.fromDer function within forge/lib/asn1.js. The ASN.1 DER parser implementation (_fromDer) recurses for every constructed ASN.1 value (SEQUENCE, SET, etc.) and lacks a guard limiting recursion depth. An attacker can craft a small DER blob containing a very large nesting depth of constructed TLVs which causes the Node.js V8 engine to exhaust its call stack and throw RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded, crashing or incapacitating the process handling the parse. This is a remote, low-cost Denial-of-Service against applications that parse untrusted ASN.1 objects.
Impact
This vulnerability enables an unauthenticated attacker to reliably crash a server or client using node-forge for TLS connections or certificate parsing.
This vulnerability impacts the ans1.fromDer function in node-forge before patched version 1.3.2.
Any downstream application using this component is impacted. These components may be leveraged by downstream applications in ways that enable full compromise of availability.
Affected versions
npm
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| node-forge | < 1.3.2 |
1.3.2 |
How to fix
Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.
node-forge npm → 1.3.2
- npm
npm install node-forge@1.3.2- yarn
yarn add node-forge@1.3.2- pnpm
pnpm add node-forge@1.3.2
Severity breakdown
CVSS 4.0 0.0
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Attack requirements
- None
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Confidentiality (vulnerable system)
- None
- Integrity (vulnerable system)
- None
- Availability (vulnerable system)
- High
- Confidentiality (subsequent systems)
- None
- Integrity (subsequent systems)
- None
- Availability (subsequent systems)
- None
CVSS 3.1 7.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Weakness
CWE-674: Uncontrolled Recursion
The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack.
How to prevent it
- Implementation: Ensure that an end condition will be reached under all logic conditions. The end condition may include checking against the depth of recursion and exiting with an error if the recursion goes too deep. The complexity of the end condition contributes to the effectiveness of this action.
- Implementation: Increase the stack size.
References
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-4642-5mcj-2rqw Forge: ASN.1 OID first arc truncation in asn1.oidToDer | Low | Also affects node-forge |
| GHSA-6wvx-3r32-xmcg Forge: Prototype Pollution in forge.http cookie handling via a malicious Set-Cookie | Medium | Also affects node-forge |
| GHSA-525v-9gp9-w22h Forge: TLS client crash when the server sends no certificate | Medium | Also affects node-forge |
| GHSA-7wch-p9px-956x Forge: Regular expression denial of service in PEM decoding (pem.decode) | High | Also affects node-forge |
| GHSA-h6cr-wjv9-3cpp Forge: Denial of Service via infinite loop in BigInteger.modInverse() with negative input (incomplete fix of CVE-2026-33891) | Low | Also affects node-forge |
| GHSA-4487-j8r4-4g2f Forge: verifyCertificateChain() removes trusted CA certificates with the same subject from the CA store | Low | Also affects node-forge |
| GHSA-5cwg-6vw7-rj6p Forge: AES-GCM authentication bypass via unvalidated tagLength option | Medium | Also affects node-forge |
| GHSA-jc66-7q78-782g Forge: PKCS#12 MAC forgery and constant-key PBE via zero iteration count | High | Also affects node-forge |
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