Whoogle Search Cross-site Scripting vulnerabilityGHSA-phg6-44m7-hx3h
MEDIUMFix: benbusby/whoogle-search@3a2e0b2GHSA-phg6-44m7-hx3h is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.1) Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in whoogle-search. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for whoogle-search — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-phg6-44m7-hx3h.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
whoogle-searchReal-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
Whoogle Search is a self-hosted metasearch engine. In versions 0.8.3 and prior, the element method in app/routes.py does not validate the user-controlled src_type and element_url variables and passes them to the send method which sends a GET request on lines 339-343 in requests.py. The returned contents of the URL are then passed to and reflected back to the user in the send_file function on line 484, together with the user-controlled src_type, which allows the attacker to control the HTTP response content type leading to a cross-site scripting vulnerability. An attacker could craft a special URL to point to a malicious website and send the link to a victim. The fact that the link would contain a trusted domain (e.g. from one of public Whoogle instances) could be used to trick the user into clicking the link. The malicious website could, for example, be a copy of a real website, meant to steal a person’s credentials to the website, or trick that person in another way. Version 0.8.4 contains a patch for this issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | whoogle-search | all versions | 0.8.4pip install --upgrade 'whoogle-search==0.8.4' |
Affected Products
whoogle searchbenbusbyResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for whoogle-search, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update whoogle-search to 0.8.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-phg6-44m7-hx3h is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Escape or sanitise the affected output on the server side rather than relying on client-side filtering, and add a Content-Security-Policy that blocks inline script execution so injected markup cannot run even if it reaches the page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-phg6-44m7-hx3h in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.