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
A new way to communicate
Ameeba Chat is built on encrypted identity, not personal profiles.
Message, call, share files, and coordinate with identities kept separate.
- • Encrypted identity
- • Ameeba Chat authenticates access
- • Aliases and categories
- • End-to-end encrypted chat, calls, and files
- • Secure notes for sensitive information
Private communication, rethought.
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.