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MEDIUM severity

Possible Open Redirect Vulnerability in Action PackGHSA-5hq2-xf89-9jxq

MEDIUM

GHSA-5hq2-xf89-9jxq is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.1) Open Redirect vulnerability in actionpack. A fix is available for actionpack — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Also known asCVE-2021-22903
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 11, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
1.2%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs68th percentile — riskier than 68% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.57%1.15%1.72%0.2%1.2%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

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

How urgent is this, really

GHSA-5hq2-xf89-9jxq by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 385,738 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
💎actionpack

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

There is a possible Open Redirect Vulnerability in Action Pack.

Versions Affected: >= v6.1.0.rc2 Not affected: < v6.1.0.rc2 Fixed Versions: 6.1.3.2

Impact

This is similar to CVE-2021-22881. Specially crafted Host headers in combination with certain "allowed host" formats can cause the Host Authorization middleware in Action Pack to redirect users to a malicious website.

Since rails/rails@9bc7ea5, strings in config.hosts that do not have a leading dot are converted to regular expressions without proper escaping. This causes, for example, config.hosts << "sub.example.com" to permit a request with a Host header value of sub-example.com.

Releases

The fixed releases are available at the normal locations.

Workarounds

The following monkey patch put in an initializer can be used as a workaround.

class ActionDispatch::HostAuthorization::Permissions
  def sanitize_string(host)
    if host.start_with?(".")
      /\A(.+\.)?#{Regexp.escape(host[1..-1])}\z/i
    else
      /\A#{Regexp.escape host}\z/i
    end
  end
end

Patches

To aid users who aren't able to upgrade immediately we have provided patches for the two supported release series. They are in git-am format and consist of a single changeset.

  • 6-1-open-redirect.patch - Patch for 6.1 series

Please note that only the 6.1.Z, 6.0.Z, and 5.2.Z series are supported at present. Users of earlier unsupported releases are advised to upgrade as soon as possible as we cannot guarantee the continued availability of security fixes for unsupported releases.

Credits

Thanks Jonathan Hefner (https://hackerone.com/jonathanhefner) for reporting this bug!

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
💎RubyGemsactionpack≥ 6.1.0.rc2&&< 6.1.3.26.1.3.2bundle update actionpack --conservative

Affected Products

1 product · 2 configurations
Application
railsrubyonrails
≥ 6.1.1 && < 6.1.3.2
1 version
6.1.0

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency
  1. Detect

    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.

  2. Fix

    Update actionpack to 6.1.3.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-5hq2-xf89-9jxq is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Stop reflecting attacker-controlled destinations: resolve every redirect target against an allowlist of paths or hosts you own, prefer a server-side key over a full URL in the request, and reject absolute URLs entirely where the flow only ever needs a relative one.

Frequently Asked Questions

There is a possible Open Redirect Vulnerability in Action Pack. Versions Affected: >= v6.1.0.rc2 Not affected: < v6.1.0.rc2 Fixed Versions: 6.1.3.2 Impact ------ This is similar to CVE-2021-22881. Specially crafted Host headers in combination with certain "allowed host" formats can cause the Host Authorization middleware in Action Pack to redirect users to a malicious website. Since rails/rails@9bc7ea5, strings in config.hosts that do not have a leading dot are converted to regular expressions without proper escaping. This causes, for example, config.hosts << "sub.example.com" to
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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Possible Open Redirect Vulnerability in Action Pack