GHSA-wqvq-5m8c-6g24 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) vulnerability in urllib3. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-wqvq-5m8c-6g24 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
CRLF injection in urllib3
Real-World Exposure
urllib3Real-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
urllib3 before 1.25.9 allows CRLF injection if the attacker controls the HTTP request method, as demonstrated by inserting CR and LF control characters in the first argument of putrequest(). NOTE: this is similar to CVE-2020-26116.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | urllib3 | all versions | 1.25.9 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for urllib3. 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 urllib3 to 1.25.9 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-wqvq-5m8c-6g24 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-wqvq-5m8c-6g24 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-wqvq-5m8c-6g24. 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.
* Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) 4 delivers the python-urllib3 package, which includes a vulnerable version of the urllib3 module, however from OCP 4.6, the python-urllib3 package is no longer shipped and will not be fixed. * In Red Hat OpenStack Platform, because the flaw has a lower impact and the fix…
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-wqvq-5m8c-6g24 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-wqvq-5m8c-6g24 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.