GHSA-p5w8-wqhj-9hhf is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in sqlparse. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-p5w8-wqhj-9hhf is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
StripComments filter contains a regular expression that is vulnerable to ReDOS (Regular Expression Denial of Service)
Real-World Exposure
sqlparseReal-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
Impact
The formatter function that strips comments from a SQL contains a regular expression that is vulnerable to ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service). The regular expression may cause exponential backtracking on strings containing many repetitions of '\r\n' in SQL comments.
Patches
The issues has been fixed in sqlparse 0.4.2.
Workarounds
Only the formatting feature that removes comments from SQL statements is affected by this regular expression. As a workaround don't use the sqlformat.format function with keyword strip_comments=True or the --strip-comments command line flag when using the sqlformat command line tool.
References
This issue was discovered by GitHub team members @erik-krogh and @yoff. It was found using a CodeQL query which identifies inefficient regular expressions. You can see the results of the query on python-sqlparse by following this link.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
- Open an issue in sqlparse issue tracker
- Email us at [email protected]
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | sqlparse | ≥ 0.4.0&&< 0.4.2 | 0.4.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for sqlparse. 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.
Fix
Update sqlparse to 0.4.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-p5w8-wqhj-9hhf 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-p5w8-wqhj-9hhf 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-p5w8-wqhj-9hhf. 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-p5w8-wqhj-9hhf in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-p5w8-wqhj-9hhf across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.