CVE-2026-44288CWE-176

protobufjs: Overlong UTF-8 decoding

Medium · published May 13, 2026

CVSS v3.1
5.3
EPSS
0%
Percentile
24.3
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.3 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00325 · 24.3th percentile
Weakness
CWE-176 · Improper Handling of Unicode Encoding
Published
2026-05-13T14:37Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 13 MAY 14:37Z
    protobufjs: Overlong UTF-8 decoding
    cvelistv5