CVE-2023-28362 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4) CWE-116 vulnerability in actionpack. A fix is available for actionpack — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Actionpack has possible cross-site scripting vulnerability via User Supplied Values to redirect_to
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-28362.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-28362 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,156 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
actionpack💎actionpackReal-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 redirect_to method in Rails allows provided values to contain characters which are not legal in an HTTP header value. This results in the potential for downstream services which enforce RFC compliance on HTTP response headers to remove the assigned Location header. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2023-28362.
Versions Affected: All. Not affected: None Fixed Versions: 7.0.5.1, 6.1.7.4
Impact
This introduces the potential for a Cross-site-scripting (XSS) payload to be delivered on the now static redirection page. Note that this both requires user interaction and for a Rails app to be configured to allow redirects to external hosts (defaults to false in Rails >= 7.0.x).
Releases
The FIXED releases are available at the normal locations.
Workarounds
Avoid providing user supplied URLs with arbitrary schemes to the redirect_to method.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | actionpack | all versions | 6.1.7.4bundle update actionpack --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | actionpack | ≥ 7.0.0&&< 7.0.5.1 | 7.0.5.1bundle update actionpack --conservative |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for actionpack, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update actionpack to 6.1.7.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-28362 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2023-28362 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-28362. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Satellite 6.14 for RHEL 8 | rubygem-actionpack-0:6.1.7.4-1.el8sat | RHSA-2023:7851 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-28362 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-28362 across RubyGems dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.