CVE-2026-44288 PUBLISHED

protobufjs: Overlong UTF-8 decoding

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 05.05.2026 Published: 13.05.2026 Updated: 13.05.2026

protobufjs compiles protobuf definitions into JavaScript (JS) functions. Prior to 7.5.6 and 8.0.2, protobufjs includes a minimal UTF-8 decoder that accepted overlong UTF-8 byte sequences and decoded them to their canonical characters instead of replacing them. An attacker who can provide protobuf binary data decoded through the affected UTF-8 path may be able to bypass application-level checks that inspect raw bytes before protobuf string decoding. For example, bytes that do not contain certain ASCII characters could decode to strings containing those characters. This vulnerability is fixed in 7.5.6 and 8.0.2.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
CVSS Score: 5.3

Product Status

Vendor protobufjs
Product protobuf.js
Versions
  • Version < 7.5.6 is affected
  • Version >= 8.0.0, < 8.0.2 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-176: Improper Handling of Unicode Encoding CWE