protobuf.js: Denial of service through unbounded protobuf recursion

Description

protobufjs could recurse without a depth limit while decoding nested protobuf data. This affected both skipping unknown group fields and generated decoding of nested message fields.

A crafted protobuf binary payload could cause the JavaScript call stack to be exhausted during decoding.

Recommendation

Update the protobufjs package to the latest compatible version. Followings are version details:

• Affected version(s): **>= 8.0.0, <= 8.0.1

  <= 7.5.5**

• Patched version(s): **8.0.2

  7.5.6**

References

• GHSA-685m-2w69-288q
• CVE-2026-44289
• CWE-674
• CAPEC-310
• OWASP 2021-A6

Related Issues

• protobuf.js: Process-wide denial of service through unsafe option paths - CVE-2026-44290
• protobuf.js: Denial of service from crafted field names in generated code - CVE-2026-44294
• protobufjs: Denial of Service via unbounded recursive JSON descriptor expansion - CVE-2026-45740
• protobuf.js: Code injection through bytes field defaults in generated toObject code - CVE-2026-44293

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How to Secure your NodeJs Express Javascript Application - part 2

10 Secure Coding Best Practices to Follow in Every Project

Tags:

npm

protobufjs