Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
-
AccessSubmit deeply nested CSS value
-
DeliveryReach Crass parser via app input path
-
ExploitUnbounded recursion on nested blocks/functions
-
ExecutionStack exhaustion or memory blowup
-
ImpactSystemStackError disrupts worker
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A06:2025 - Insecure Design
ASVS 5.0
V2 - Validation and Business Logic Resource consumption limits
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Impact The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires that the embedding application pass attacker-controlled CSS (or content containing CSS, such as user-submitted HTML cleaned via Sanitize) into Crass's parser on a version prior to 1.0.7, where no nesting depth guard exists by default. The trigger is specifically input with simple blocks or functions nested far more deeply than legitimate CSS requires. Limiting factors: the flaw is not reachable if the application never parses untrusted CSS; it is mitigated if the application already wraps Crass calls in SystemStackError handling; and on patched (>= 1.0.7) deployments the default :maximum_depth of 25 discards over-deep constructs as an :error node, so only explicitly raising :maximum_depth reintroduces risk. |
| Impact | This is a moderate-severity availability issue, not a high-urgency emergency. No CVSS score or vector is provided by any source, so severity must be assessed independently; the vendor's own HISTORY.md rates it 'Moderate'. There is no EPSS score, no CISA KEV listing, and no PoC/exploit reference in the input, so this is not confirmed actively exploited and no public exploit identified at time of analysis. The vuln.today Decision label is 'this_month' (not act_now or emergency), which is consistent with a denial-of-service-only flaw (CWE-400) that cannot yield code execution, data disclosure, or integrity loss. The real-world risk is genuinely gated by deployment: Crass is a library, so exploitability depends on whether the embedding application feeds attacker-controlled CSS into the parser (a common pattern when Crass is used transitively via the Sanitize gem to clean user-submitted HTML/CSS). Where that pattern exists and no SystemStackError rescue is present, a single crafted input can crash a request worker; where untrusted CSS is never parsed, practical risk is negligible. Note the absence of any CVSS vector in the input means the attack-vector and privilege characterization below is inferred from the description and typical usage, not confirmed by a scoring authority. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker submits a value containing many deeply nested CSS simple blocks or functions (e.g. thousands of nested '{' or '(' delimiters) to an application that parses untrusted CSS with Crass - for instance an HTML/CSS sanitization path. Crass recurses without a depth guard until Ruby raises SystemStackError 'stack level too deep' or consumes excessive memory, disrupting the handling request or worker. No public exploit is identified at time of analysis, though crafting the triggering input is trivial. |
Get an e-mail when this CVE is exploited, patched or re-scored. Free account.
Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Oct 29, 2026
Deeply nested CSS simple blocks and functions parsed by the Crass Ruby gem before version 1.0.7 can exhaust the Ruby interpreter stack and raise SystemStackError: stack level too deep, or drive disproportionate memory consumption, giving unauthenticated remote attackers a limited denial-of-service condition (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L). Only applications that feed attacker-controlled CSS - or content containing CSS, such as user-submitted HTML sanitized with Sanitize - into Crass's parser on versions prior to 1.0.7 are exposed, and the trigger requires nesting far deeper than legitimate stylesheets produce; parsing is safe if untrusted CSS never reaches the library. No public exploit code or PoC was identified at time of analysis and the issue has not been confirmed actively exploited (CISA KEV); vendor-released patch: 1.0.7.
RemediationAI
Upgrade the crass gem to 1.0.7 or later (vendor-released patch: 1.0.7), which introduces the :maximum_depth parsing option with a conservative default of 25 and converts over-deep constructs into an :error node rather than recursing further; the change is in commit https://github.com/rgrove/crass/commit/cf68287356ec6e20d51cfc4a2d0c3912b7334e99 and the release is at https://github.com/rgrove/crass/releases/tag/v1.0.7, with the advisory at https://github.com/rgrove/crass/security/advisories/GHSA-6jxj-px6v-747w. Do not raise :maximum_depth above the default unless a specific stylesheet corpus demonstrably requires it, since doing so re-opens the stack-exhaustion path. Where upgrading is not immediately possible, the vendor's documented workaround is to wrap Crass calls in explicit SystemStackError handling in the calling application, accepting that the parse still aborts and the surrounding request may still fail; the vendor also notes additional RAM as a palliative for the memory dimension only, which does not address stack exhaustion and is not a real mitigation. Reducing the surface by refusing to pass untrusted CSS into Crass at all - for example, rejecting or truncating input whose nesting depth exceeds a pre-check limit before parsing - limits exposure but duplicates parsing logic and can be bypassed by obfuscated CSS, so it is a stopgap rather than a fix.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in rubygems
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
Crass is a pure-Ruby CSS parser (CPE pkg:rubygems/crass) implemented as a recursive-descent parser mirroring the CSS Syntax specification, with consume_rules handling simple blocks and consume_declarations handling functions. Because recursion in this design follows input nesting directly, the depth of the Ruby call stack is attacker-influenced; with no depth guard an input containing thousands of nested blocks or functions reaches the interpreter's stack limit and raises SystemStackError, an exception class under which ordinary rescue blocks do not catch it. The class is CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption): the root cause is unbounded recursion without a nesting cap, and the fix commit cf68287356ec6e20d51cfc4a2d0c3912b7334e99 adds a @depth counter incremented on entry to block and function parsing and restored in an ensure clause. When @depth exceeds the new :maximum_depth option (DEFAULT_MAXIMUM_DEPTH = 25), the over-deep construct is discarded via discard_block and emitted as an :error node with the value "maximum-depth-exceeded". The commit message notes a secondary memory dimension: each nested simple block or function retains a :tokens array spanning its descendants for serialization, so serialization metadata grows with nesting depth and a modest cap also bounds that amplification. The default of 25 is described as far higher than any legitimate CSS needs but far below the depth at which Ruby would raise SystemStackError.
Know when Ruby gets its next vulnerability
- Watch products and get an email when something new is published
- Check this CVE against your own stack and servers
- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
No credit card · 7-day full trial
Severity by source
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L
Attacker-supplied CSS is typically reachable over the network without auth (AV:N/PR:N/UI:N); impact is availability-only and partial since SystemStackError is rescuable (C:N/I:N/A:L).
Primary rating from Vendor (https://github.com/rgrove/crass).
CVSS VectorVendor: https://github.com/rgrove/crass
Lifecycle Timeline
1DescriptionCVE.org
Impact
Crass recursively parses CSS simple blocks and functions without a depth guard. An attacker-controlled value containing many deeply nested blocks can recurse until Ruby raises SystemStackError: stack level too deep, or can cause excessive memory usage.
Patches
This is fixed in Crass 1.0.7, which adds a configurable depth limit with a conservative default.
Workarounds
Add SystemStackError handling around Crass calls in your application. Buy more RAM.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.
Ruby before 2.4.3 allows Net::FTP command injection. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.8), this vulnerability is remotely expl
The lazy_initialize function in lib/resolv.rb in Ruby through 2.4.3 uses Kernel#open, which might allow Command Injectio
Ruby through 2.2.7, 2.3.x through 2.3.4, and 2.4.x through 2.4.1 can expose arbitrary memory during a JSON.generate call
Type confusion exists in two methods of Ruby's WIN32OLE class, ole_invoke and ole_query_interface. Rated critical severi
Authenticated remote code execution in OpenC3 COSMOS (Ruby gem 'openc3' versions 5.1.0 through 7.2.1) lets any logged-in
Type confusion exists in _cancel_eval Ruby's TclTkIp class method. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerabilit
An exploitable heap overflow vulnerability exists in the Fiddle::Function.new "initialize" function functionality of Rub
An issue was discovered in Oniguruma 6.2.0, as used in Oniguruma-mod in Ruby through 2.4.1 and mbstring in PHP through 7
Ruby code execution in Elo (npm @enspirit/elo) through 1.0.0 lets an attacker who controls Elo source gain arbitrary Rub
Stored XSS in Bugsink error tracking tool before 2.0.13 allows unauthenticated attackers to inject persistent scripts th
Ruby before 2.4.2, 2.3.5, and 2.2.8 is vulnerable to a malicious format string which contains a precious specifier (*) w
Heap-based buffer overflow in Ruby 1.8, 1.9 before 1.9.3-p484, 2.0 before 2.0.0-p353, 2.1 before 2.1.0 preview2, and tru
EUVD-2026-114322
GHSA-6jxj-px6v-747w
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Exploit-DB