CVE-2022-23514 | Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in Loofah

Loofah is a general library for manipulating and transforming HTML/XML documents and fragments, built on top of Nokogiri. Loofah < 2.19.1 contains 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 is patched in version 2.19.1.

Published: 2022-12-14 Last update: 2025-11-03 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2022-23514 is rated Moderate Risk (47.7/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.27%). Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2022-23514

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2025-12-04 0.24% 0.27% +0.03%
2 2025-12-01 0.27% 0.24% -0.03%
3 2025-11-21 — 0.27% —

Full EPSS history (25 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2022-23514

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2022-23514

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2022-23514

GHSA-486f-hjj9-9vhh · Severity: high · Ecosystem: rubygems — Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in Loofah

OS Trackers for CVE-2022-23514

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2022-23514 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (ruby-loofah), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2022-23514
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-23514
suse high — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-23514/
ubuntu medium CVE-2022-23514 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (ruby-loofah), 13 status rows across 13 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 5, needs-triage 4, ignored 3, released 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-23514

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2022-23514

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
loofah_project loofah < 2.19.1 cpe:2.3:a:loofah_project:loofah:*:*:*:*:*:ruby:*:*

References for CVE-2022-23514

cvelogic Threat Intelligence