The vulnerability stems from how path processing handled nested arrays in toPath() and disallowProtoPath() prior to the fix. The commit diff shows: 1) disallowProtoPath() was modified to call toPath() internally 2) toPath() added validation rejecting nested array paths containing non-string/number elements. The PoC demonstrates exploitation through array-based paths like [["proto"], "polluted"]. The mutIn/mutInManyUnsafe functions are explicitly called out in CVE/GHSA descriptions as entry points, and tests were added to verify their patched behavior. These functions passed user-controlled paths to defMutator without properly validating nested array structures that could contain prototype pollution vectors.