Warning: Cryptographic verification vulnerability in Node-forge, can compromise any downstream application, patch immediately!

    * Last update:  27/11/2025
   
    * Affected products:
  → Node-forge

    * Type: Interpretation Conflict

    * CVE/CVSS:

• CVE-2025-12816: CVSS 8.7 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Sources

Github - https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/security/advisories/GHSA-5gfm-wpxj-wjgq

Risks

Palo Alto Network researchers discovered a high-severity vulnerability in the node-forge JavaScript library. The Forge library is commonly used to provide cryptographic functions to applications. These range from certificate generation and verification to encryption/decryption.

At this time, no exploits have been observed, however, a successful exploitation of vulnerability could lead to improper verification of cryptographic data, leading to authentication bypass, modification of singed data, and other cryptographic exploits. This would impact any service or application relying on the use of these functions to provide confidentiality, integrity and authenticity in any form.

Description

A core component in the node-forge library is the ANS.1 validation function, which allows parsing of data structures encoded in the ASN.1 format. This format is used by many cryptographic schemas, including X.509, PKCS#7, PLCS#9, etc. By modifying specific fields of the ANS.1 structure fields, an attacker can craft data that passes the verification checks, despite being malformed. In turn this causes certain objects to be misinterpreted, allowing critical integrity checks to be skipped. Any application using this library is affected by the flaw.

Recommended Actions

Patch 
The Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium strongly recommends installing updates for vulnerable devices with the highest priority after thorough testing.

Monitor/Detect 
The CCB recommends organizations upscale monitoring and detection capabilities to identify any related suspicious activity, ensuring a swift response in case of an intrusion.

In case of an intrusion, you can report an incident via: https://ccb.belgium.be/cert/report-incident.

While patching appliances or software to the newest version may provide safety from future exploitation, it does not remediate historic compromise.

References

NVD NIST - https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-12816
CERT-CC - https://kb.cert.org/vuls/id/521113