GHSA-785h-76cm-cpmf
Django TomSelect incomplete escaping of dangerous characters in widget attributes
Blast Radius
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Description
Summary
User supplied values passed through to certain attributes in form widgets are not fully escaped for potentially dangerous tokens, and in some cases are rendered in browser as valid html tags.
Details
Attributes passed to the widget (such as label_field) containing <, >, and similar tokens are not fully escaped. This results in some raw values reaching the widget, and rendering in part or fully.
For example, a label of: "Test User <script>I can pass this to the label_field and it gets rendered</script>" is rendered in the choices's label visually as "Test User " with the trailing space, and what appears as an un-executed script tag following it (which is visible when viewing source).
The actual output rendered in the browser for this example is: <div role="option" data-value="63f205b6" class="item" data-ts-item="">Test User <script>I can pass this to the label_field and it gets rendered</script></div>
The script tags appears to be valid in Chrome dev tools, but doesn't appear execute code.
Impact
Although the risk may be mediated since the content within the rendered <script></script> tags does not seem to actually/immediately run, potential may exist for other ways of increasing the risk (e.g.: code injection). In addition, the widget does not display correctly for valid strings containing < or >. Valid use-cases for printing these characters include widget label fields displaying email addresses (e.g.: "User Jane <[email protected]>"
Because of the relatively small number of users at this moment, our plan to yank affected releases on PyPI and GitHub, and because raw text is rendered but does not seem to be executable, I am marking the Severity Low.
Update to version 5.3.3. The only difference from 5.3.2 is the code and documentation changes to resolve this vulnerability, so the update process should not be problematic.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | django-tomselect | all versions | 2025.3.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for django-tomselect. 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 django-tomselect to 2025.3.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-785h-76cm-cpmf 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-785h-76cm-cpmf 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-785h-76cm-cpmf. 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-785h-76cm-cpmf in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-785h-76cm-cpmf across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.