CVE-2022-23517

Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in rails-html-sanitizer

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: December 14, 2022 at 04:10 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 04:30 AM UTC
3 products affected across 3 vendorsDebian LinuxRails Html SanitizersRails Html Sanitizers

Using rails-html-sanitizer by rails?

Get instant alerts when new vulnerabilities affect rails-html-sanitizer - before attackers find them.

Real-time alertsTrack your software stackFree plan available
Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 2%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

rails-html-sanitizer is responsible for sanitizing HTML fragments in Rails applications. Certain configurations of rails-html-sanitizer < 1.4.4 use an inefficient regular expression that is susceptible to excessive backtracking when attempting to sanitize certain SVG attributes. This may lead to a denial of service through CPU resource consumption. This issue has been patched in version 1.4.4.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 1.4.4
Affected range stops below 1.4.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
v < 1.4.4
Affected range stops below 1.4.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.5HIGHGitHub_M
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-1333

Get alerted

Stop reading CVE feeds looking for your own stack

Track the products you run and VulnTracker tells you when a new CVE affects them — with what is known about fixing it, and nothing about the rest.

Free plan, no card