This vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-12816, affects the node-forge library used in various Red Hat products including Red Hat Quay. It arises from an interpretation conflict in ASN.1 structure validation, allowing attackers to craft malicious ASN.1 inputs that desynchronize schema validations. This semantic divergence enables bypassing downstream cryptographic verifications and security decisions without authentication. Red Hat has released Red Hat Quay 3.13.11 which includes fixes for this and other issues. The vulnerability is associated with multiple CWEs including CWE-179 (Incorrect Behavior Order) and CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling).

The vulnerability allows unauthenticated attackers to bypass cryptographic verification mechanisms, potentially compromising confidentiality and integrity of affected systems. This can lead to unauthorized actions or data exposure in Red Hat products that use node-forge for cryptographic operations. The CVSS v3 base score assigned by Red Hat is 8.7 (high severity), reflecting network attack vector with high impact on confidentiality and integrity and no required privileges or user interaction.

Red Hat has released Red Hat Quay 3.13.11 which includes a fix for this vulnerability. Users should upgrade to this version or later to remediate the issue. Currently, no alternative mitigations meet Red Hat's criteria for ease of use, applicability, and stability. Applying the official update is the recommended remediation step.