Scriban Affected by Memory Exhaustion (OOM) via Unbounded String Generation (Denial of Service)GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p
MEDIUMFix: scriban/scriban@a6fe607GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) vulnerability in scriban. A fix is available for scriban — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Real-World Exposure
scriban.NETScriban.SignedReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects NuGet packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
TemplateContext.LimitToString defaults to 0 (unlimited). While Scriban implements a default LoopLimit of 1000, an attacker can still cause massive memory allocation via exponential string growth. Doubling a string for just 30 iterations generates over 1GB of text, instantly exhausting heap memory and crashing the host process. Because no output size limit is enforced, repeated string concatenation results in exponential memory growth.
Proof of Concept (PoC): The following payload executes in under 30 iterations but results in ~1GB string allocation, crashing the process.
using Scriban;
string maliciousTemplate =
@"
{{
a = ""A""
for i in 1..30
a = a + a
end
a
}}";
var template = Template.Parse(maliciousTemplate);
var context = new TemplateContext();
try
{
template.Render(context);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("\nException: " + ex.Message);
}
Impact: An attacker can supply a small template that triggers exponential string growth, forcing the application to allocate excessive memory. This leads to severe memory pressure, garbage collection thrashing, and eventual process termination (DoS).
Suggested Fix:
Enforce a sensible default limit for string output. Set default LimitToString to 1MB (1,048,576 characters).
public int LimitToString { get; set; } = 1048576;
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| .NETNuGet | scriban | all versions | 6.6.0dotnet add package scriban --version 6.6.0 |
| .NETNuGet | Scriban.Signed | all versions | 6.6.0dotnet add package Scriban.Signed --version 6.6.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for scriban, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update scriban to 6.6.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p in your dependencies?
Find it across NuGet, including transitive dependencies.