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Vulnerability Database

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A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. Risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

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Q: How do we prioritize remediation without burning out the team?

Use a repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress so remediation is steady, not reactive.

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328,409

Total vulnerabilities in the database

Vulnerable dependencies in Nokogiri

Summary

Nokogiri v1.13.2 upgrades two of its packaged dependencies:

vendored libxml2 from v2.9.12 to v2.9.13
vendored libxslt from v1.1.34 to v1.1.35

Those library versions address the following upstream CVEs:

libxslt: CVE-2021-30560 (CVSS 8.8, High severity)
libxml2: CVE-2022-23308 (Unspecified severity, see more information below)

Those library versions also address numerous other issues including performance improvements, regression fixes, and bug fixes, as well as memory leaks and other use-after-free issues that were not assigned CVEs.

Please note that this advisory only applies to the CRuby implementation of Nokogiri < 1.13.2, and only if the packaged libraries are being used. If you've overridden defaults at installation time to use system libraries instead of packaged libraries, you should instead pay attention to your distro's libxml2 and libxslt release announcements.

Mitigation

Upgrade to Nokogiri >= 1.13.2.

Users who are unable to upgrade Nokogiri may also choose a more complicated mitigation: compile and link an older version Nokogiri against external libraries libxml2 >= 2.9.13 and libxslt >= 1.1.35, which will also address these same CVEs.

Impact

libxslt CVE-2021-30560

CVSS3 score: 8.8 (High)
Fixed by https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/commit/50f9c9c

All versions of libxslt prior to v1.1.35 are affected.

Applications using untrusted XSL stylesheets to transform XML are vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack and should be upgraded immediately.

libxml2 CVE-2022-23308

As of the time this security advisory was published, there is no officially published information available about this CVE's severity. The above NIST link does not yet have a published record, and the libxml2 maintainer has declined to provide a severity score.
Fixed by https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/commit/652dd12
Further explanation is at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2022-February/msg00015.html

The upstream commit and the explanation linked above indicate that an application may be vulnerable to a denial of service, memory disclosure, or code execution if it parses an untrusted document with parse options DTDVALID set to true, and NOENT set to false.

An analysis of these parse options:

While NOENT is off by default for Document, DocumentFragment, Reader, and Schema parsing, it is on by default for XSLT (stylesheet) parsing in Nokogiri v1.12.0 and later.
DTDVALID is an option that Nokogiri does not set for any operations, and so this CVE applies only to applications setting this option explicitly.

It seems reasonable to assume that any application explicitly setting the parse option DTDVALID when parsing untrusted documents is vulnerable and should be upgraded immediately.

Published: Feb 25, 2022
Updated: Apr 14, 2023
GHSA: GHSA-fq42-c5rg-92c2
Severity: High
Exploit:

No technical information available.

CWEs:

CWE-416

Affected Software
References

Software	From	Fixed in
nokogiri	-	1.13.2

https://github.com/sparklemotion/nokogiri/security/advisories/GHSA-fq42-c5rg-92c2

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.