diff --git a/packaging/Makefile b/packaging/Makefile
index cc217ce3..3c4f8a6b 100644
--- a/packaging/Makefile
+++ b/packaging/Makefile
@@ -15,7 +15,8 @@ debian-package-code:
 	cp ../examples/instance_message_from_aleph.json ./aleph-vm/opt/aleph-vm/examples/instance_message_from_aleph.json
 	cp -r ../examples/data ./aleph-vm/opt/aleph-vm/examples/data
 	mkdir -p ./aleph-vm/opt/aleph-vm/examples/volumes
-	pip3 install --progress-bar off --target ./aleph-vm/opt/aleph-vm/ 'aleph-message==0.5.0' 'eth-account==0.10' 'sentry-sdk==1.31.0' 'qmp==1.1.0' 'aleph-superfluid~=0.2.1' 'sqlalchemy[asyncio]>=2.0' 'aiosqlite==0.19.0' 'alembic==1.13.1' 'aiohttp_cors==0.7.0' 'pyroute2==0.7.12' 'python-cpuid==0.1.0' 'solathon==1.0.2'
+	# Fixing this protobuf dependency version to avoid getting CI errors as version 5.29.0 have this compilation issue
+	pip3 install --progress-bar off --target ./aleph-vm/opt/aleph-vm/ 'aleph-message==0.5.0' 'eth-account==0.10' 'sentry-sdk==1.31.0' 'qmp==1.1.0' 'aleph-superfluid~=0.2.1' 'sqlalchemy[asyncio]>=2.0' 'aiosqlite==0.19.0' 'alembic==1.13.1' 'aiohttp_cors==0.7.0' 'pyroute2==0.7.12' 'python-cpuid==0.1.0' 'solathon==1.0.2' 'protobuf==5.28.3'
 	python3 -m compileall ./aleph-vm/opt/aleph-vm/
 
 debian-package-resources: firecracker-bins vmlinux download-ipfs-kubo  target/bin/sevctl
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index d33f05a0..faebfb9a 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -45,6 +45,8 @@ dependencies = [
   "msgpack==1.0.7",
   "nftables @ git+https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-netfilter-team/pkg-nftables#egg=nftables&subdirectory=py",
   "packaging==23.2",
+  # Fixing this protobuf dependency version to avoid getting CI errors as version 5.29.0 have this compilation issue
+  "protobuf==5.28.3",
   "psutil==5.9.5",
   "py-cpuinfo==9",
   "pydantic[dotenv]~=1.10.13",
diff --git a/runtimes/aleph-debian-12-python/create_disk_image.sh b/runtimes/aleph-debian-12-python/create_disk_image.sh
index 10c8ae40..98fbb276 100755
--- a/runtimes/aleph-debian-12-python/create_disk_image.sh
+++ b/runtimes/aleph-debian-12-python/create_disk_image.sh
@@ -36,7 +36,8 @@ locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
 
 echo "Pip installing aleph-sdk-python"
 mkdir -p /opt/aleph/libs
-pip3 install --target /opt/aleph/libs 'aleph-sdk-python==1.0.0' 'aleph-message==0.4.9' 'fastapi~=0.109.2'
+# Fixing this protobuf dependency version to avoid getting CI errors as version 5.29.0 have this compilation issue.
+pip3 install --target /opt/aleph/libs 'aleph-sdk-python==1.0.0' 'aleph-message==0.4.9' 'fastapi~=0.109.2' 'protobuf==5.28.3'
 
 # Compile Python code to bytecode for faster execution
 # -o2 is needed to compile with optimization level 2 which is what we launch init1.py ("python -OO")