GHSA-cc65-xxvf-f7r9 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-1333 vulnerability in scrapy. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for scrapy — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Scrapy vulnerable to ReDoS via XMLFeedSpider
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-cc65-xxvf-f7r9.
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-cc65-xxvf-f7r9 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 379,145 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
scrapy🐍scrapyReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
The following parts of the Scrapy API were found to be vulnerable to a ReDoS attack:
-
The
XMLFeedSpiderclass or any subclass that uses the default node iterator:iternodes, as well as direct uses of thescrapy.utils.iterators.xmliterfunction. -
Scrapy 2.6.0 to 2.11.0: The
open_in_browserfunction for a response without a base tag.
Handling a malicious response could cause extreme CPU and memory usage during the parsing of its content, due to the use of vulnerable regular expressions for that parsing.
Patches
Upgrade to Scrapy 2.11.1.
If you are using Scrapy 1.8 or a lower version, and upgrading to Scrapy 2.11.1 is not an option, you may upgrade to Scrapy 1.8.4 instead.
Workarounds
For XMLFeedSpider, switch the node iterator to xml or html.
For open_in_browser, before using the function, either manually review the response content to discard a ReDos attack or manually define the base tag to avoid its automatic definition by open_in_browser later.
Acknowledgements
This security issue was reported by @nicecatch2000 through huntr.com.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | scrapy | ≥ 2&&< 2.11.1 | 2.11.1pip install --upgrade 'scrapy==2.11.1' |
| 🐍PyPI | scrapy | all versions | 1.8.4pip install --upgrade 'scrapy==1.8.4' |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for scrapy, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update scrapy to 2.11.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-cc65-xxvf-f7r9 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-cc65-xxvf-f7r9 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-cc65-xxvf-f7r9. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-cc65-xxvf-f7r9 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-cc65-xxvf-f7r9 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.