GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p Scriban Affected by Memory Exhaustion (OOM) via Unbounded String Generation (Denial of Service)

Not scored Published

Attackers can cause denial of service in applications using Scriban by supplying templates that trigger exponential memory allocation.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Not needed
Attackable
Over the internet
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
Available

What is GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p?

GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p is a denial of service vulnerability in Scriban.Signed, published on 19 Mar 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

TemplateContext.LimitToString defaults to 0 (unlimited). While Scriban implements a default LoopLimit of 1000, an attacker can still cause massive memory allocation via exponential string growth. Doubling a string for just 30 iterations generates over 1GB of text, instantly exhausting heap memory and crashing the host process. Because no output size limit is enforced, repeated string concatenation results in exponential memory growth.

Proof of Concept (PoC): The following payload executes in under 30 iterations but results in ~1GB string allocation, crashing the process.

using Scriban;

string maliciousTemplate =
    @"
        {{
            a = ""A""
            for i in 1..30
                a = a + a
            end
            a
        }}";

var template = Template.Parse(maliciousTemplate);

var context = new TemplateContext();

try
{
    template.Render(context);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    Console.WriteLine("\nException: " + ex.Message);
}

Impact: An attacker can supply a small template that triggers exponential string growth, forcing the application to allocate excessive memory. This leads to severe memory pressure, garbage collection thrashing, and eventual process termination (DoS).

Suggested Fix: Enforce a sensible default limit for string output. Set default LimitToString to 1MB (1,048,576 characters).

public int LimitToString { get; set; } = 1048576; 

Which versions are affected by GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including Scriban.Signed and scriban.

PackageAffectedFixed in
Scriban.Signed NuGetAll versions6.6.0
Scriban.Signed NuGetAll versions6.6.0
scriban NuGetAll versions6.6.0
scriban NuGetAll versions6.6.0

How do I fix GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p?

Upgrade Scriban.Signed to 6.6.0 or later.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of GHSA-5rpf-x9jg-8j5p in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

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