GHSA-v222-6mr4-qj29
CRITICALCommand Injection vulnerability in asciidoctor-include-ext
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.
Blast Radius
asciidoctor-include-extReal-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
Impact
Applications using Asciidoctor (Ruby) with asciidoctor-include-ext (prior to version 0.4.0), which render user-supplied input in AsciiDoc markup, may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary system commands on the host operating system. This attack is possible even when (EDIT: it’s not)allow-uri-read is disabled!
Patches
The vulnerability has been fixed in commit c7ea001 (and further improved in cbaccf3), which is included in version 0.4.0.
Workarounds
require 'asciidoctor/include_ext'
class Asciidoctor::IncludeExt::IncludeProcessor
# Overrides superclass private method to mitigate Command Injection
# vulnerability in asciidoctor-include-ext <0.4.0.
def target_uri?(target)
target.downcase.start_with?('http://', 'https://') \
&& URI.parse(target).is_a?(URI::HTTP)
rescue URI::InvalidURIError
false
end
end
References
Credits
This vulnerability was discovered by Joern Schneeweisz from the GitLab Security Research Team.
For more information
See commit message c7ea001.
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory open an issue in jirutka/asciidoctor-include-ext.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | asciidoctor-include-ext | all versions | 0.4.0 |
Research 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 asciidoctor-include-ext. 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 asciidoctor-include-ext to 0.4.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-v222-6mr4-qj29 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-v222-6mr4-qj29 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-v222-6mr4-qj29. 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-v222-6mr4-qj29 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-v222-6mr4-qj29 across RubyGems dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.