High

Vyper vulnerable to incorrect ordering of arguments for kwargs passed to internal calls

  • Disclosed: 11.05.2023
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 15:17

Impact

Internal calls to internal functions with more than 1 default argument are compiled incorrectly. Depending on the number of arguments provided in the call, the defaults are added not right-to-left, but left-to-right. If the types are incompatible, typechecking is bypassed. In the bar() function in the following code, self.foo(13) is compiled to self.foo(13,12) instead of self.foo(13,1337).

vyper
@internal
def foo(a:uint256 = 12, b:uint256 = 1337):
    pass

@internal
def bar():
    self.foo(13)

note that at the time of publication, the ability to pass kwargs to internal functions is an undocumented feature that does not seem to be widely used.

Patches

patched in c3e68c302aa6e1429946473769dd1232145822ac

Workarounds

Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?

References

Are there any links users can visit to find out more?

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Python (PyPI) vyper < 0.3.8 0.3.8

References

CVSS score 7.5/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-683
Platform
Python (PyPI)
Package
vyper
Disclosed
11.05.2023
Updated
11.10.2026 15:17

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - PYSEC-2023-79 - PyPA Advisory Database; CC BY 4.0

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-ph9x-4vc9-m39g - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: vyper

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Python (PyPI)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

All (47) in the archive
Total entries
47
First → latest
03.2020 10.2026
Without a fix
5
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 3
  • High 14
  • Medium 20
  • Low 10

Disclosures per year

  1. 2020: 1
  2. 2021: 5
  3. 2022: 4
  4. 2023: 14
  5. 2024: 14
  6. 2025: 6
  7. 2026: 3
Severity:
  1. Critical · 9.8 CVE-2024-24563 < 0.4.0 0.4.0
  2. Critical · 9.8 CVE-2024-24561 < 0.4.0 0.4.0
  3. High · 7.3 CVE-2024-22419 >= 0.3.0, < 0.4.0 0.4.0
  4. High · 7.5 CVE-2023-46247 < 0.3.8 0.3.8
  5. High · 8.1 CVE-2023-42443 >= 0.3.4, < 0.3.10 0.3.10
  6. Critical · 8.7 CVE-2023-39363 >= 0.2.15, < 0.3.1 0.3.1
  7. Vyper vulnerable to incorrect ordering of arguments for kwargs passed to internal calls this entry
    High · 7.5 CVE-2023-32059 < 0.3.8 0.3.8
  8. High · 7.5 CVE-2023-32058 < 0.3.8 0.3.8
  9. High · 7.5 CVE-2023-30837 < 0.3.8 0.3.8
  10. High · 7.5 CVE-2023-30629 >= 0.3.1, < 0.3.8 0.3.8
  11. High · 7.5 CVE-2022-29255 < 0.3.4 0.3.4
  12. High · 7.1 CVE-2022-24788 < 0.3.2 0.3.2
  13. High · 7.5 CVE-2022-24787 < 0.3.2 0.3.2
  14. High ghsa-7f92-rr6w-cq64 >= 0.2.13, < 0.2.15 0.2.15

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