GHSA-vfq6-hq5r-27r6 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-640 vulnerability in django. 7 public exploit references exist, so weaponization risk is real. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-vfq6-hq5r-27r6 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Django Potential account hijack via password reset form
Real-World Exposure
django🐍django🐍djangoReal-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
Django before 1.11.27, 2.x before 2.2.9, and 3.x before 3.0.1 allows account takeover. A suitably crafted email address (that is equal to an existing user's email address after case transformation of Unicode characters) would allow an attacker to be sent a password reset token for the matched user account. (One mitigation in the new releases is to send password reset tokens only to the registered user email address.)
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | django | all versions | 1.11.27 |
| 🐍PyPI | django | ≥ 2.0&&< 2.2.9 | 2.2.9 |
| 🐍PyPI | django | ≥ 3.0&&< 3.0.1 | 3.0.1 |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Django < 3.0 < 2.2 < 1.11 - Account Hijack
by Ryuji Tsutsui · Dec 24, 2019
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for django. 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 django to 1.11.27 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-vfq6-hq5r-27r6 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-vfq6-hq5r-27r6 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-vfq6-hq5r-27r6. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-vfq6-hq5r-27r6 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-vfq6-hq5r-27r6 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.