GHSA-wpv5-97wm-hp9c
HIGHGHSA-wpv5-97wm-hp9c is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in rack. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-wpv5-97wm-hp9c is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Rack's multipart parser buffers unbounded per-part headers, enabling DoS (memory exhaustion)
Blast Radius
rack💎rack💎rackReal-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
Summary
Rack::Multipart::Parser can accumulate unbounded data when a multipart part’s header block never terminates with the required blank line (CRLFCRLF). The parser keeps appending incoming bytes to memory without a size cap, allowing a remote attacker to exhaust memory and cause a denial of service (DoS).
Details
While reading multipart headers, the parser waits for CRLFCRLF using:
@sbuf.scan_until(/(.*?\r\n)\r\n/m)
If the terminator never appears, it continues appending data (@sbuf.concat(content)) indefinitely. There is no limit on accumulated header bytes, so a single malformed part can consume memory proportional to the request body size.
Impact
Attackers can send incomplete multipart headers to trigger high memory use, leading to process termination (OOM) or severe slowdown. The effect scales with request size limits and concurrency. All applications handling multipart uploads may be affected.
Mitigation
- Upgrade to a patched Rack version that caps per-part header size (e.g., 64 KiB).
- Until then, restrict maximum request sizes at the proxy or web server layer (e.g., Nginx
client_max_body_size).
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | rack | all versions | 2.2.19 |
| 💎RubyGems | rack | ≥ 3.1&&< 3.1.17 | 3.1.17 |
| 💎RubyGems | rack | ≥ 3.2&&< 3.2.2 | 3.2.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for rack. 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 rack to 2.2.19 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-wpv5-97wm-hp9c 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-wpv5-97wm-hp9c 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-wpv5-97wm-hp9c. 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-wpv5-97wm-hp9c in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-wpv5-97wm-hp9c across RubyGems dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.