GHSA-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr
MEDIUMGHSA-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr is a medium-severity (CVSS 5) CWE-116 vulnerability in guarddog. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
GuardDog: Unsanitized human-readable scan output allows terminal escape injection from malicious package content
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-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr.
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-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr 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 356,530 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
guarddogReal-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
GuardDog includes attacker-controlled filenames, file locations, messages, and code snippets in its default human-readable output without escaping terminal control characters. A malicious package can therefore inject ANSI or OSC escape sequences into analyst terminals or CI logs.
Description
The finding formatter stores file paths and snippets from scanned content:
location = file_path + ":" + str(start_line)
finding = {
"location": location,
"code": code,
"message": result["extra"]["message"],
}
The human-readable reporter later prints these values directly:
" * " + finding["message"] + " at " + finding["location"] + "\n " + _format_code_line_for_output(finding["code"])
No escaping is applied for control characters such as \x1b. A malicious package can therefore ship a filename like:
evil\x1b[2J.py
or matched source lines containing terminal escapes, which survive into the final CLI output.
Reproduction summary
- Create a file whose name contains
\x1b[2J. - Feed a semgrep-style result referencing that file into
Analyzer._format_semgrep_response(). - Render the result with
HumanReadableReporter.print_scan_results(). - The output string contains the raw escape bytes, which a terminal may interpret.
Key code paths
guarddog/analyzer/analyzer.py:377-392guarddog/reporters/human_readable.py:36-42guarddog/reporters/human_readable.py:84-91
Practical impact
This can be used to:
- clear or rewrite analyst terminal output
- inject misleading or spoofed log content in CI
- emit clickable OSC 8 hyperlinks or title changes in compatible terminals
Prior public disclosure check
As of 2026-03-18, no matching public GitHub advisory, CVE, or public repo issue was found for this specific bug.
Suggested fix
Escape or strip terminal control characters before rendering any attacker-controlled value in human-readable output. This should cover package names, file paths, messages, and code snippets.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | guarddog | ≥ 2.6.0 | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for guarddog. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Remediation status
No patched version of guarddog has shipped for GHSA-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
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 pinpoints whether GHSA-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr. 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-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-m5p4-gvpx-4mvr across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.