How severe is GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh?

GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh has a CVSS score of 0/10, rated NONE. Review your exposure and patch according to your risk tolerance.

Which packages are affected by GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh?

GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh affects the following packages: pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish (GitHub Actions). Ecosystems affected: GitHub Actions.

How do I fix GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh?

Update pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish to 1.13.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh in my GitHub Actions dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish. 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.

How do I mitigate GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh?

O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Is GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

When was GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh was published on September 4, 2025. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

📦 GitHub Actions

GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh

NONE

GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh is a none-severity (CVSS 0) remote code execution vulnerability in pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.

PyPI publish GitHub Action vulnerable to injectable expression expansions in action steps

Published

Sep 4, 2025

Updated

Sep 4, 2025

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

1 / 1

Exploits

None indexed

Blast Radius

1 pkg affected

📦pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects GitHub Actions packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

Summary

gh-action-pypi-publish makes use of GitHub Actions expression expansions (i.e. ${{ ... }}) in contexts that are potentially attacker controllable. Depending on the trigger used to invoke gh-action-pypi-publish, this may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code within the context of a workflow step that invokes gh-action-pypi-publish.

Details

gh-action-pypi-publish contains a composite action step, set-repo-and-ref, that makes use of expression expansions:

  - name: Set repo and ref from which to run Docker container action
    id: set-repo-and-ref
    run: |
      # Set repo and ref from which to run Docker container action
      # to handle cases in which `github.action_` context is not set
      # https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/2473
      REF=${{ env.ACTION_REF || env.PR_REF || github.ref_name }}
      REPO=${{ env.ACTION_REPO || env.PR_REPO || github.repository }}
      REPO_ID=${{ env.PR_REPO_ID || github.repository_id }}
      echo "ref=$REF" >>"$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
      echo "repo=$REPO" >>"$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
      echo "repo-id=$REPO_ID" >>"$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
    shell: bash
    env:
      ACTION_REF: ${{ github.action_ref }}
      ACTION_REPO: ${{ github.action_repository }}
      PR_REF: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.ref }}
      PR_REPO: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.repo.full_name }}
      PR_REPO_ID: ${{ github.event.pull_request.base.repo.id }}

Permalink: https://github.com/pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish/blob/db8f07d3871a0a180efa06b95d467625c19d5d5f/action.yml#L114-L125

In normal intended operation, these expansions are used to establish a correct priority for outputs like ref and repo-id.

However, these expansions have a side effect: because they're done with ${{ ... }} and not with ${...} (i.e. normal shell interpolation), they can bypass normal shell quoting rules. In particular, if both env.ACTION_REF and env.PR_REF evaluate to empty strings, then the expression falls back to github.ref_name, which can be an attacker controlled string via a branch or tag name.

For example, if the attacker is able to set a branch name to something like innocent;cat${IFS}/etc/passwd, then the REF line may expand as:

REF=innocent;cat${IFS}/etc/passwd

which would set REF to innocent and then run the attacker's code.

Additional information about dangerous expansions can be found in zizmor's template-injection rule documentation.

Impact

The impact of this vulnerability is very low: the expression in question is unlikely to be evaluated in normal operation, since env.ACTION_REF should always take precedence.

In particular, the action is not vulnerable in many popular configurations, i.e. those where pull_request or release or a push: tags event is used to call the action.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦GitHub Actions	`pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish`	all versions	1.13.0

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish. 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 pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish to 1.13.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh 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-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh 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-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Summary `gh-action-pypi-publish` makes use of GitHub Actions expression expansions (i.e. `${{ ... }}`) in contexts that are potentially attacker controllable. Depending on the trigger used to invoke `gh-action-pypi-publish`, this may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code within the context of a workflow step that invokes `gh-action-pypi-publish`. ### Details `gh-action-pypi-publish` contains a composite action step, `set-repo-and-ref`, that makes use of expression expansions: ```yaml - name: Set repo and ref from which to run Docker container action id: set-repo-and-ref

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh in your dependencies?

O3 detects GHSA-vxmw-7h4f-hqxh across GitHub Actions dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works