CVE-2020-5249 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-113 vulnerability in puma. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2020-5249 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
HTTP Response Splitting (Early Hints) in Puma
Real-World Exposure
puma💎pumaReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
In Puma (RubyGem) before 4.3.3 and 3.12.4, if an application using Puma allows untrusted input in an early-hints header, an attacker can use a carriage return character to end the header and inject malicious content, such as additional headers or an entirely new response body. This vulnerability is known as HTTP Response Splitting. While not an attack in itself, response splitting is a vector for several other attacks, such as cross-site scripting (XSS). This is related to CVE-2020-5247, which fixed this vulnerability but only for regular responses. This has been fixed in 4.3.3 and 3.12.4.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | puma | all versions | 3.12.4 |
| 💎RubyGems | puma | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 4.3.3 | 4.3.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for puma. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update puma to 3.12.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-5249 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2020-5249 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2020-5249. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-5249 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2020-5249 across RubyGems dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.