Researchers disclosed six vulnerabilities, dubbed Proto6, in the widely used protobuf.js ecosystem that can enable remote code execution, denial of service, prototype pollution, and prototype injection in affected Node.js environments. The most severe flaw, CVE-2026-44291, allows arbitrary JavaScript execution through prototype pollution combined with unsafe code-generation behavior, while other issues involve recursion-based crashes, unsafe schema option path handling, crafted field-name abuse, and code injection in pbjs static output.
The bugs affect applications and build pipelines that deserialize Protocol Buffers data or generate code from schemas using protobuf.js, including Google Cloud client libraries, gRPC-related tooling, messaging frameworks such as Baileys, and CI/CD workflows. Researchers said the library is deeply embedded across the JavaScript ecosystem, with more than 50 million weekly downloads and frequent transitive inclusion that can make exposure hard to identify. Fixed versions are available in protobufjs 7.5.6 and 8.0.2, and in protobufjs-cli 1.2.1 and 2.0.2; vulnerable releases include protobuf.js through 7.5.5 and 8.0.0-8.0.1, and protobufjs-cli through 1.2.0 and 2.0.0-2.0.1.

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Fixes were made available for the affected packages, including protobuf.js versions 7.5.6 and 8.0.2 and protobufjs-cli versions 1.2.1 and 2.0.2. The patched releases address the six disclosed Proto6 vulnerabilities.
Cyera researchers disclosed six vulnerabilities, collectively named Proto6, affecting protobuf.js and protobufjs-cli. The issues can enable remote code execution, denial of service, prototype pollution, prototype injection, and code-generation abuse in affected Node.js environments.
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