Overview
The cybersecurity landscape is constantly evolving, and one recent development that has caught our attention is a critical vulnerability identified in gluestack-ui, a highly popular library of components and patterns designed with Tailwind CSS (NativeWind). This vulnerability, officially designated as CVE-2025-53104, potentially affects any individual or organization that uses a fork or derivative of the gluestack-ui repository. The significance of this vulnerability lies in its potential to allow an attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands, leading to potential system compromise or data leakage.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-53104
Severity: Critical (9.1 based on CVSS Severity Score)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
Escape the Surveillance Era
Most apps won’t tell you the truth.
They’re part of the problem.
Phone numbers. Emails. Profiles. Logs.
It’s all fuel for surveillance.
Ameeba Chat gives you a way out.
- • No phone number
- • No email
- • No personal info
- • Anonymous aliases
- • End-to-end encrypted
Chat without a trace.
Product | Affected Versions
gluestack-ui | Prior to commit e6b4271
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability stems from the discussion-to-slack.yml GitHub Actions workflow in gluestack-ui. Untrusted discussion fields, such as the title or body, were directly interpolated into shell commands in a run: block within this workflow. Therefore, a potential attacker could craft a malicious GitHub Discussion title or body, allowing them to execute arbitrary shell commands on the Actions runner.
Conceptual Example Code
Here’s a conceptual example of how an attacker might exploit this vulnerability. They could use a GitHub Discussion title or body like this:
POST /github/discussion HTTP/1.1
Host: github.com
Content-Type: application/json
{ "title": "$(curl -X DELETE http://target.example.com)" }That command could potentially delete all data from a target server.
Recommendations for Mitigation
While the vulnerability has been fixed in commit e6b4271 with the removal of the discussion-to-slack.yml workflow, users of forks or derivatives of the gluestack-ui repository should ensure they have applied this update. For those unable to apply the update immediately, a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) could provide temporary mitigation.