VulnerabilityPublished 19 Jan 2024Updated 30 May 2025

CVE-2024-23332: notaryproject specifications · Operation on a Resource after Expiration or Release

Affects notaryproject specificationsSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.0 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 10:12 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.0Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 21% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:L

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: High
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: Low
Availability: Low

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
Privileges Required: High: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable component that could affect component-wide settings and files.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the impacted component are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 19 Jan 2024
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubnotaryproject/specifications`pkg:github/notaryproject/specifications`Other threats	Affected <=1.0.1	Fixed in–

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AI-suggested

European organizations should enforce strict signature validation policies ('strict' or equivalent) in their artifact consumption workflows to reject expired or revoked signatures. Implement automated processes for short-lived signature issuance and periodic artifact resigning to minimize the window of exposure. Utilize the Notary Project's revocation features to promptly invalidate compromised or outdated certificates. Container registries should be secured with robust access controls and monitoring to prevent unauthorized modifications. Integrate continuous supply chain security scanning to detect usage of outdated or vulnerable artifacts. Educate DevOps and security teams on the risks of permissive trust policies and rollback attacks. Where urgent deployment scenarios require relaxed policies, implement compensating controls such as additional runtime security monitoring and anomaly detection. Regularly update Notary Project components to versions beyond 1.0.1 once patches are available. Finally, conduct incident response drills simulating registry compromise to validate detection and mitigation capabilities.

Description

The Notary Project is a set of specifications and tools intended to provide a cross-industry standard for securing software supply chains by using authentic container images and other OCI artifacts. An external actor with control of a compromised container registry can provide outdated versions of OCI artifacts, such as Images. This could lead artifact consumers with relaxed trust policies (such as `permissive` instead of `strict`) to potentially use artifacts with signatures that are no longer valid, making them susceptible to any exploits those artifacts may contain. In Notary Project, an artifact publisher can control the validity period of artifact by specifying signature expiry during the signing process. Using shorter signature validity periods along with processes to periodically resign artifacts, allows artifact producers to ensure that their consumers will only receive up-to-date artifacts. Artifact consumers should correspondingly use a `strict` or equivalent trust policy that enforces signature expiry. Together these steps enable use of up-to-date artifacts and safeguard against rollback attack in the event of registry compromise. The Notary Project offers various signature validation options such as `permissive`, `audit` and `skip` to support various scenarios. These scenarios includes 1) situations demanding urgent workload deployment, necessitating the bypassing of expired or revoked signatures; 2) auditing of artifacts lacking signatures without interrupting workload; and 3) skipping of verification for specific images that might have undergone validation through alternative mechanisms. Additionally, the Notary Project supports revocation to ensure the signature freshness. Artifact publishers can sign with short-lived certificates and revoke older certificates when necessary. This revocation serves as a signal to inform artifact consumers that the corresponding unexpired artifact is no longer approved by the publisher. This enables the artifact publisher to control the validity of the signature independently of their ability to manage artifacts in a compromised registry.

Impact

For European organizations, especially those relying on containerized workloads and OCI artifacts in their software supply chains, this vulnerability poses a risk of deploying outdated or compromised software components. Attackers controlling a container registry could perform rollback attacks, causing systems to run vulnerable or malicious code, potentially leading to service disruptions or integrity breaches. This risk is heightened in sectors with stringent supply chain security requirements such as finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. The impact on confidentiality is minimal, but integrity and availability could be affected if attackers exploit known vulnerabilities in outdated artifacts. Organizations with relaxed trust policies or lacking automated artifact resigning and revocation processes are particularly vulnerable. Given the increasing adoption of container technologies across Europe, the threat could affect a broad range of enterprises, from startups to large-scale cloud providers. However, the requirement for high privileges and user interaction to exploit reduces the likelihood of widespread automated attacks, making targeted attacks more probable. The vulnerability also underscores the importance of supply chain security governance and compliance with European cybersecurity frameworks.

Summary

CVE-2024-23332 is a medium-severity vulnerability affecting the Notary Project specifications up to version 1.0.1. The Notary Project provides a standardized framework for securing software supply chains by authenticating container images and other OCI (Open Container Initiative) artifacts through digital signatures. This vulnerability arises from improper handling of artifact signature validity periods, specifically an operation on a resource after its expiration or release (CWE-672). In scenarios where an attacker has compromised a container registry, they can serve outdated OCI artifacts with expired or revoked signatures. If artifact consumers use relaxed trust policies such as 'permissive' instead of 'strict', they may accept these outdated artifacts, potentially exposing themselves to known vulnerabilities or malicious code embedded in those older versions. The Notary Project allows artifact publishers to specify signature expiry during signing, enabling short-lived signatures and periodic resigning to ensure consumers only receive current, valid artifacts. Additionally, revocation mechanisms allow publishers to invalidate older certificates independently of artifact management capabilities. However, the vulnerability exists because some consumers may bypass strict signature validation, allowing rollback attacks where attackers substitute newer artifacts with older, vulnerable ones. The CVSS 3.1 score of 4.0 reflects a network attack vector requiring high complexity, high privileges, and user interaction, with no confidentiality impact but low integrity and availability impacts. No known exploits are reported in the wild yet. This vulnerability highlights the critical importance of enforcing strict signature validation policies and leveraging short-lived certificates with revocation to maintain artifact integrity in compromised environments.

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 8 Jul 2025, 17:11 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-672

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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