CVE-2024-42360 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-77 vulnerability in sequenceserver. A fix is available for sequenceserver — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Command Injection in sequenceserver
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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.
- 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-2024-42360.
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
sequenceserverReal-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
SequenceServer lets you rapidly set up a BLAST+ server with an intuitive user interface for personal or group use. Several HTTP endpoints did not properly sanitize user input and/or query parameters. This could be exploited to inject and run unwanted shell commands. This vulnerability has been fixed in 3.1.2.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | sequenceserver | all versions | 3.1.2bundle update sequenceserver --conservative |
Affected Products
sequenceserverwurmlabDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for sequenceserver, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update sequenceserver to 3.1.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-42360 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-2024-42360 in your dependencies?
Find it across RubyGems, including transitive dependencies.