GHSA-hww2-5g85-429m is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) vulnerability in uri. A fix is available for uri — see the affected versions and patch details below.
URI gem has ReDoS vulnerability
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-hww2-5g85-429m 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 378,156 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
uri💎uri💎uri💎uriReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
A ReDoS issue was discovered in the URI component before 0.12.2 for Ruby. The URI parser mishandles invalid URLs that have specific characters. There is an increase in execution time for parsing strings to URI objects with rfc2396_parser.rb and rfc3986_parser.rb.
NOTE: this issue exists becuse of an incomplete fix for CVE-2023-28755. Version 0.10.3 is also a fixed version.
The Ruby advisory recommends updating the uri gem to 0.12.2. In order to ensure compatibility with the bundled version in older Ruby series, you may update as follows instead:
- For Ruby 3.0: Update to uri 0.10.3
- For Ruby 3.1 and 3.2: Update to uri 0.12.2.
You can use gem update uri to update it. If you are using bundler, please add gem uri, >= 0.12.2 (or other version mentioned above) to your Gemfile.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | uri | ≥ 0.10.1&&< 0.10.3 | 0.10.3bundle update uri --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | uri | ≥ 0.12.0&&< 0.12.2 | 0.12.2bundle update uri --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | uri | ≥ 0.11.0&&< 0.11.2 | 0.11.2bundle update uri --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | uri | all versions | 0.10.0.3bundle update uri --conservative |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for uri, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update uri to 0.10.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-hww2-5g85-429m 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-hww2-5g85-429m can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-hww2-5g85-429m. 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 vulnerability exists due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2023-28755 in upstream.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | ruby:3.1-8090020240311122605.a75119d5 | RHSA-2024:1431 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | ruby:2.5-8100020240627152904.489197e6 | RHSA-2024:4499 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | ruby:3.1-9030020240320163942.9 | RHSA-2024:1576 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-hww2-5g85-429m in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-hww2-5g85-429m across RubyGems dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.