GHSA-3x8r-x6xp-q4vm
HIGHGHSA-3x8r-x6xp-q4vm is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-674 vulnerability in loofah. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-3x8r-x6xp-q4vm is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Uncontrolled Recursion in Loofah
Blast Radius
loofahReal-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
Summary
Loofah >= 2.2.0, < 2.19.1 uses recursion for sanitizing CDATA sections, making it susceptible to stack exhaustion and raising a SystemStackError exception. This may lead to a denial of service through CPU resource consumption.
Mitigation
Upgrade to Loofah >= 2.19.1.
Users who are unable to upgrade may be able to mitigate this vulnerability by limiting the length of the strings that are sanitized.
Severity
The Loofah maintainers have evaluated this as High Severity 7.5 (CVSS3.1).
References
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | loofah | ≥ 2.2.0&&< 2.19.1 | 2.19.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for loofah. 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 loofah to 2.19.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-3x8r-x6xp-q4vm 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 GHSA-3x8r-x6xp-q4vm 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 GHSA-3x8r-x6xp-q4vm. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-3x8r-x6xp-q4vm in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-3x8r-x6xp-q4vm across RubyGems dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.