Hex writes unverified package tarballs to standard output in mix hex.package fetch (hexpm hex)

CVE-2026-105280
MEDIUM 6.9

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.21 % Β· percentile 11 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
EEF
NVD status
Deferred

Description

Improper Validation of Integrity Check Value vulnerability in hexpm hex allows a package mirror to substitute the tarball that mix hex.package fetch PACKAGE VERSION --output - writes to standard output. Hex compares a fetched tarball's inner and outer checksums with the repository's signed registry before writing it to a file or unpacking it. The standard output branch of mix hex.package fetch writes the bytes returned by Hex.SCM.fetch/3 without that comparison, and Hex.SCM.fetch/3 doesn't verify freshly downloaded tarballs itself. When a mirror configured with HEX_MIRROR_URL or mirror_url serves altered bytes, the command prints them and exits successfully, while the same fetch with --output FILE fails with a checksum mismatch. Hex also prints diagnostics to standard output while the command runs: the body of a failed HTTP response from the update check or a registry fetch, and API warnings from the x-hex-message header. A mirror that answers one of those requests with an error whose body is a tar archive gets that archive written to standard output ahead of the verified tarball, so a pipeline that unpacks standard output extracts the mirror's files. This happens even when the checksum check then fails, because the archive is already on standard output. This issue affects hex: from 0.20.2 before 2.5.2.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-354 β€” Improper Validation of Integrity Check Value

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.9CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:H/SA:NEEF
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.9CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:H/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XNVD Β· 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db (Secondary)

European references

Affected products

ProductVersions
hexpm Β· hexaffected 0.20.2 < 2.5.2
hexpm Β· hexaffected d1f5a085d9d4748e1f7d195e4bc39ebd77c28d9c < *

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST β€” attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA β€” reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain β€” this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD