Cross-site scripting in Ruby on Rails - CVE-2012-3465
Published: September 29, 2025
Vulnerability identifier: #VU116160
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 5.1 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2012-3465
CWE-ID: CWE-79
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The disclosed vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
The vulnerability exists due to insufficient sanitization of user-supplied data in actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/sanitize_helper.rb in the strip_tags helper in Ruby on Rails. A remote attacker can trick the victim to follow a specially crafted link and execute arbitrary HTML and script code in user's browser in context of vulnerable website.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to steal potentially sensitive information, change appearance of the web page, perform phishing and drive-by-download attacks.
Affected software
Ruby on Rails
How to mitigate CVE-2012-3465
Cybersecurity Help is currently unaware of any official solution to address this vulnerability..
Ruby on Rails - addressed in versions 3.0.17, 3.1.8, 3.2.8