GHSA-jjhj-8gx7-x836 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) CWE-732 vulnerability in passenger. A fix is available for passenger — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Incorrect Access Control in Phusion Passenger
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-jjhj-8gx7-x836 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
passengerReal-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
An Incorrect Access Control vulnerability in SpawningKit in Phusion Passenger 5.3.x before 5.3.2 allows a Passenger-managed malicious application, upon spawning a child process, to report an arbitrary different PID back to Passenger's process manager. If the malicious application then generates an error, it would cause Passenger's process manager to kill said reported arbitrary PID.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | passenger | ≥ 5.3.0&&< 5.3.2 | 5.3.2bundle update passenger --conservative |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for passenger, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update passenger to 5.3.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-jjhj-8gx7-x836 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-jjhj-8gx7-x836 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-jjhj-8gx7-x836. 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-jjhj-8gx7-x836 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-jjhj-8gx7-x836 across RubyGems dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.