CVE-2022-24803 is a critical-severity (CVSS 10) OS Command Injection vulnerability in asciidoctor-include-ext. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for asciidoctor-include-ext — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Command Injection vulnerability in asciidoctor-include-ext
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-24803.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
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
asciidoctor-include-extReal-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
Impact
Applications using Asciidoctor (Ruby) with asciidoctor-include-ext (prior to version 0.4.0), which render user-supplied input in AsciiDoc markup, may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary system commands on the host operating system. This attack is possible even when (EDIT: it’s not)allow-uri-read is disabled!
Patches
The vulnerability has been fixed in commit c7ea001 (and further improved in cbaccf3), which is included in version 0.4.0.
Workarounds
require 'asciidoctor/include_ext'
class Asciidoctor::IncludeExt::IncludeProcessor
# Overrides superclass private method to mitigate Command Injection
# vulnerability in asciidoctor-include-ext <0.4.0.
def target_uri?(target)
target.downcase.start_with?('http://', 'https://') \
&& URI.parse(target).is_a?(URI::HTTP)
rescue URI::InvalidURIError
false
end
end
References
Credits
This vulnerability was discovered by Joern Schneeweisz from the GitLab Security Research Team.
For more information
See commit message c7ea001.
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory open an issue in jirutka/asciidoctor-include-ext.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | asciidoctor-include-ext | all versions | 0.4.0bundle update asciidoctor-include-ext --conservative |
Affected Products
asciidoctor-include-extasciidoctor-include-ext_projectResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for asciidoctor-include-ext, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update asciidoctor-include-ext to 0.4.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-24803 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-24803 in your dependencies?
Find it across RubyGems, including transitive dependencies.