GHSA-6jgw-rgmm-7cv6 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Use After Free vulnerability in pyo3. A fix is available for pyo3 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
PyO3 has a risk of use-after-free in `borrowed` reads from Python weak references
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 GHSA-6jgw-rgmm-7cv6.
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
GHSA-6jgw-rgmm-7cv6 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 377,166 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
pyo3Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The family of functions to read "borrowed" values from Python weak references were fundamentally unsound, because the weak reference does itself not have ownership of the value. At any point the last strong reference could be cleared and the borrowed value would become dangling.
In PyO3 0.22.4 these functions have all been deprecated and patched to leak a strong reference as a mitigation. PyO3 0.23 will remove these functions entirely.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | pyo3 | ≥ 0.22.0&&< 0.22.4 | 0.22.4cargo update -p pyo3 --precise 0.22.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pyo3, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update pyo3 to 0.22.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-6jgw-rgmm-7cv6 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 GHSA-6jgw-rgmm-7cv6 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-6jgw-rgmm-7cv6. 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-6jgw-rgmm-7cv6 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-6jgw-rgmm-7cv6 across crates.io dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.