NIST deprecates RSA-2048 from 2030. Find every one of them before attackers do.
💎
💎 RubyGems
Not in CISA KEV
HIGH severity

CVE-2020-8163 — actionview

HIGH

CVE-2020-8163 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) Code Injection vulnerability in actionview. 6 public exploit or proof-of-concept references are indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for actionview — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Remote code execution via user-provided local names in ActionView

Also known asBIT-rails-2020-8163GHSA-cr3x-7m39-c6jq
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
6 known
Exploitation data as of Nov 5, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
82.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Very High Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs100th percentile — riskier than 100% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
79.3%84.2%89.0%93.8%91.1%82.5%May 26Sep 26Nov 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

Where this sits among everything scored

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
💎actionview

Real-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

The is a code injection vulnerability in versions of Rails prior to 5.0.1 that would allow an attacker who controlled the locals argument of a render call to perform a RCE.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
💎RubyGemsactionviewall versions4.2.11.3bundle update actionview --conservative

Affected Products

2 products · 2 configurations
OS
debian linuxdebian
1 version
9.0
Application
railsrubyonrails
< 5.0.1
range
Exploits & PoCs
6

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

EDB-48716webappsruby

Rails 5.0.1 - Remote Code Execution

by Lucas Amorim · Jul 26, 2020

Exploit-DB Source

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for actionview, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update actionview to 4.2.11.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-8163 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.

How to detect CVE-2020-8163

A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:

nuclei -id cve-2020-8163 -u https://target
Template
Ruby on Rails <5.0.1 - Remote Code Execution
Severity
high
Impact
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to unauthorized remote code execution.
Remediation
Upgrade Ruby on Rails to version 5.0.1 or above.

Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (tim_koopmans), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.

Frequently Asked Questions

The is a code injection vulnerability in versions of Rails prior to 5.0.1 that would allow an attacker who controlled the `locals` argument of a `render` call to perform a RCE.
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2020-8163 in your dependencies?

Find it across RubyGems, including transitive dependencies.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works
CVE-2020-8163: actionview RCE — Fixed in 4.2.11.3