Skip to content

in-toto-golang and in-toto-python have inconsistent negation behavior

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published May 5, 2026 in in-toto/in-toto-golang

Package

gomod github.com/in-toto/in-toto-golang (Go)

Affected versions

< 0.11.0

Patched versions

0.11.0

Description

Impact

What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?

in-toto-golang and in-toto-python both support glob patterns in artifact rules to indicate the artifacts that a rule applies to. Both support negations in character classes to indicate what should not be matched, but they used different operators to indicate the negation. in-toto-python uses ! while in-toto-golang used ^. A layout authored with the expectations of one implementation can therefore exhibit different behavior in the other implementation.

This impacts users in a specific set of circumstances where two different implementations are used to verify the same layout + attestation bundle at different stages of the same pipeline. As a rule of thumb, we advise using a single implementation across all aspects of a pipeline, from layout creation to pipeline execution and verification to prevent this class of bugs.

Patches

Has the problem been patched? What versions should users upgrade to?

in-toto-golang has been updated to use ! instead of ^ to indicate negation. See in-toto/in-toto-golang#462. This is part of v0.11.0.

References

@adityasaky adityasaky published to in-toto/in-toto-golang May 5, 2026
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database May 8, 2026
Reviewed May 8, 2026

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
High
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
High
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

EPSS score

Weaknesses

Improper Handling of Inconsistent Special Elements

The product does not properly handle input in which an inconsistency exists between two or more special characters or reserved words. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

No known CVE

GHSA ID

GHSA-pmwq-pjrm-6p5r

Credits

Loading Checking history
See something to contribute? Suggest improvements for this vulnerability.