GHSA-gwvm-45gx-3cf8 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.1) Open Redirect vulnerability in urllib3. A fix is available for urllib3 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Authorization Header forwarded on redirect
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-gwvm-45gx-3cf8.
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-gwvm-45gx-3cf8 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 377,636 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
urllib3Real-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
urllib3 before 1.24.2 does not remove the authorization HTTP header when following a cross-origin redirect (i.e., a redirect that differs in host, port, or scheme). This can allow for credentials in the authorization header to be exposed to unintended hosts or transmitted in cleartext. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2018-20060 (which was case-sensitive).
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | urllib3 | all versions | 1.24.2pip install --upgrade 'urllib3==1.24.2' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for urllib3, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update urllib3 to 1.24.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-gwvm-45gx-3cf8 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-gwvm-45gx-3cf8 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-gwvm-45gx-3cf8. 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.
This is only exploitable if a redirect differs in host, port, or scheme. Due to the credential exposure in the authorization header, the confidentiality is highly impacted, but there is no proof that the integrity is affected in any way.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | container-tools:rhel8-8100020240227110532.82888897 | RHSA-2024:2988 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-gwvm-45gx-3cf8 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-gwvm-45gx-3cf8 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.