Know every vulnerabilitybefore it knows you.
DevGuard continuously monitors your dependencies and alerts you when CVEs like this one affect your stack — with real-time threat intelligence built for developers.
GHSA-jhpv-4q4f-43g5
No affected components available
Impact
This is a critical network security vulnerability for Akka.Remote users who have SSL / TLS enabled on their Akka.Remote connections and were expecting certificate-based authentication to be enforced on all peers attempting to join the network.
In all versions of Akka.Remote from v1.2.0 to v1.5.51, TLS could be enabled via our akka.remote.dot-netty.tcp transport and this would correctly enforce private key validation on the server-side of inbound connections. Akka.Remote, however, never asked the outbound-connecting client to present ITS certificate - therefore it's possible for untrusted parties to connect to a private key'd Akka.NET cluster and begin communicating with it without any certificate.
The issue here is that for certificate-based authentication to work properly, ensuring that all members of the Akka.Remote network are secured with the same private key, Akka.Remote needed to implement mutual TLS. This was not the case before Akka.NET v1.5.52.
If you are running Akka.NET inside a private network you fully control or you were never using TLS in the first place, then this bug has no impact on you. However: if you are using TLS to secure your network YOU MUST upgrade to Akka.NET V1.5.52 or later.
Patches
https://github.com/akkadotnet/akka.net/pull/7847 - forces "fail fast" semantics if TLS is enabled but the private key is missing or invalid. Previous versions would only check that once connection attempts occurred. https://github.com/akkadotnet/akka.net/pull/7851 - critical fix: enforces mutual TLS (mTLS) by default, so both parties must be keyed using the same certificate. This fulfills the original security
These updates have been shipped into Akka.NET v1.5.52: https://github.com/akkadotnet/akka.net/releases/tag/1.5.52
Workarounds
If your application isn't exposed publicly, then CVE-2025-61778 has no practical impact on your application. That being said: upgrading to Akka.NET v1.5.52 or later is a good idea.
References
Please view our latest network security documentation here: https://getakka.net/articles/remoting/security.html
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability.
Exploitation activity has been observed. Apply available patches or mitigations urgently.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
Browse More
Continuously monitor your dependencies and get alerted when vulnerabilities like this one affect your stack.
Checkout DevGuard