Skip to content
Heist/ feed
Back to feed
Medium

Security advisory

Type: advisorySources: OSVCVE: CVE-2020-5217

In Secure Headers (RubyGem secure_headers), a directive injection vulnerability is present in versions before 3.8.0, 5.1.0, and 6.2.0. If user-supplied input was passed into append/override_content_security_policy_directives, a semicolon could be injected leading to directive injection. This could be used to e.g. override a script-src directive. Duplicate directives are ignored and the first one wins. The directives in secure_headers are sorted alphabetically so they pretty much all come before script-src. A previously undefined directive would receive a value even if SecureHeaders::OPT_OUT was supplied. The fixed versions will silently convert the semicolons to spaces and emit a deprecation warning when this happens. This will result in innocuous browser console messages if being exploited/accidentally used. In future releases, we will raise application errors resulting in 500s. Depending on what major version you are using, the fixed versions are 6.2.0, 5.1.0, 3.8.0.

Products
Not specified
Affected versions
Not specified
Fixed versions
Not specified
CVEs
CVE-2020-5217
Confirmed fixed CVEs
Not specified
Updated in this feed
31 Oct 2026, 11:29 UTC · Revision 1

Source evidence

CVE-2020-5217

core-osv · Original source

Published 23 Jan 2020, 03:15 UTC

In Secure Headers (RubyGem secure_headers), a directive injection vulnerability is present in versions before 3.8.0, 5.1.0, and 6.2.0. If user-supplied input was passed into append/override_content_security_policy_directives, a semicolon could be injected leading to directive injection. This could be used to e.g. override a script-src directive. Duplicate directives are ignored and the first one wins. The directives in secure_headers are sorted alphabetically so they pretty much all come before script-src. A previously undefined directive would receive a value even if SecureHeaders::OPT_OUT was supplied. The fixed versions will silently convert the semicolons to spaces and emit a deprecation warning when this happens. This will result in innocuous browser console messages if being exploited/accidentally used. In future releases, we will raise application errors resulting in 500s. Depending on what major version you are using, the fixed versions are 6.2.0, 5.1.0, 3.8.0.

osv:CVE-2020-5217
Complete source record
{
  "id": "64fc851412e1297b5498d8222365781a291991b8991143559342e6930ea32ffa",
  "url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2020-5217",
  "method": "structured",
  "payload": {
    "kind": "advisory",
    "title": "CVE-2020-5217",
    "summary": "In Secure Headers (RubyGem secure_headers), a directive injection vulnerability is present in versions before 3.8.0, 5.1.0, and 6.2.0. If user-supplied input was passed into append/override_content_security_policy_directives, a semicolon could be injected leading to directive injection. This could be used to e.g. override a script-src directive. Duplicate directives are ignored and the first one wins. The directives in secure_headers are sorted alphabetically so they pretty much all come before script-src. A previously undefined directive would receive a value even if SecureHeaders::OPT_OUT was supplied. The fixed versions will silently convert the semicolons to spaces and emit a deprecation warning when this happens. This will result in innocuous browser console messages if being exploited/accidentally used. In future releases, we will raise application errors resulting in 500s. Depending on what major version you are using, the fixed versions are 6.2.0, 5.1.0, 3.8.0.",
    "evidence": "osv:CVE-2020-5217",
    "products": [],
    "severity": "medium",
    "structured": {
      "id": "CVE-2020-5217",
      "aliases": [
        "CVE-2020-5217",
        "GHSA-xq52-rv6w-397c"
      ],
      "metrics": [
        {
          "type": "CVSS_V3",
          "score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N"
        }
      ],
      "affected": [
        {
          "ranges": [
            {
              "repo": "https://github.com/github/secure_headers",
              "type": "GIT",
              "events": [
                {
                  "introduced": "0"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "0c8f0968f292ef699ac997b2085fe8ca6e87e621"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "40e45a1a69362f8839d34e0fe16a5750330f4c5f"
                },
                {
                  "introduced": "eb9af0be9ec9447ddfffd89f4d2ca8ccd350bbd3"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "1298905068931621a2c1988b175a1da186bcd641"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "936a160e3e9659737a9f9eafce13eea36b5c9fa3"
                }
              ],
              "database_specific": {
                "extracted_events": [
                  {
                    "cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:twitter:secure_headers:*:*:*:*:*:ruby:*:*",
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "introduced": "0"
                      },
                      {
                        "fixed": "3.8.0"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "CPE_RANGE"
                  },
                  {
                    "cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:twitter:secure_headers:*:*:*:*:*:ruby:*:*",
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "introduced": "5.0.0"
                      },
                      {
                        "fixed": "5.1.0"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "CPE_RANGE"
                  },
                  {
                    "cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:twitter:secure_headers:*:*:*:*:*:ruby:*:*",
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "introduced": "6.0.0"
                      },
                      {
                        "fixed": "6.2.0"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "CPE_RANGE"
                  },
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "fixed": "936a160e3e9659737a9f9eafce13eea36b5c9fa3"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "REFERENCES_COMMIT"
                  }
                ]
              }
            }
          ],
          "versions": [
            "v3.7.4",
            "v5.0.5",
            "v3.7.3",
            "v6.1.2",
            "v6.1.1",
            "v6.1.0",
            "v6.0.0.alpha03",
            "v6.0.0.alpha02",
            "v6.0.0.alpha01",
            "v5.0.4",
            "v5.0.3",
            "v5.0.2",
            "v5.0.1",
            "v4.0.1",
            "v3.7.2",
            "v5.0.0.alpha01",
            "v3.7.1",
            "v4.0.0",
            "v4.0.0.alpha04",
            "v3.7.0",
            "v3.6.7",
            "v4.0.0.alpha03",
            "v4.0.0.alpha02",
            "v4.0.0.alpha01",
            "v3.6.5",
            "v3.6.4",
            "v3.6.3",
            "v3.6.1",
            "v3.6.0",
            "v3.5.1",
            "v3.5.0",
            "v3.5.0.pre",
            "v3.4.1",
            "v3.4.0",
            "v3.3.2",
            "v3.3.1",
            "v3.3.0",
            "v3.2.0",
            "v3.1.2",
            "v3.1.1",
            "v3.1.0",
            "v3.0.3",
            "v3.0.2",
            "v3.0.1",
            "v3.0.0",
            "v3.0.0.rc1",
            "2.4.4",
            "2.4.3",
            "2.4.2",
            "2.4.1",
            "2.4.0",
            "2.3.0",
            "2.2.4",
            "2.2.3",
            "2.2.2",
            "2.2.1",
            "2.2.0",
            "v2.1.0",
            "v2.0.2",
            "v2.0.1",
            "2.0.0",
            "v.2.0.0.pre2",
            "v1.3.4",
            "v2.0.0.pre",
            "v1.3.3",
            "v1.3.2",
            "v1.1.1",
            "v0.4.3",
            "v0.4.2"
          ],
          "database_specific": {
            "source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2020-5217.json"
          }
        }
      ],
      "modified": "2026-10-20T10:54:22.386859215Z",
      "provider": "osv",
      "references": [
        "https://github.com/twitter/secure_headers/pull/421",
        "https://github.com/twitter/secure_headers/security/advisories/GHSA-xq52-rv6w-397c",
        "https://github.com/twitter/secure_headers/commit/936a160e3e9659737a9f9eafce13eea36b5c9fa3",
        "https://github.com/twitter/secure_headers/issues/418"
      ],
      "provider_metadata": {}
    },
    "related_cves": [
      {
        "value": "CVE-2020-5217",
        "evidence": "/id"
      }
    ],
    "security_relevant": true,
    "severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
  },
  "source_id": "core-osv",
  "document_id": 385223,
  "published_at": "2020-01-23T03:15:10.793+00:00"
}