A possible escalation to RCE vulnerability exists when using YAML serialized columns in Active Record < 7.0.3.1, <6.1.6.1, <6.0.5.1 and <5.2.8.1 which could allow an attacker, that can manipulate data in the database (via means like SQL injection), the ability to escalate to an RCE.
Weakness
The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently ensuring that the resulting data will be valid.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Activerecord | Activerecord_project | * | 5.2.8.1 (excluding) |
| Activerecord | Activerecord_project | 6.0.0 (including) | 6.0.5.1 (excluding) |
| Activerecord | Activerecord_project | 6.1.0 (including) | 6.1.6.1 (excluding) |
| Activerecord | Activerecord_project | 7.0.0 (including) | 7.0.3.1 (excluding) |
| Red Hat Satellite 6.11 for RHEL 7 | RedHat | tfm-rubygem-activerecord-0:6.0.6-2.el7sat | * |
| Red Hat Satellite 6.11 for RHEL 8 | RedHat | tfm-rubygem-activerecord-0:6.0.6-2.el8sat | * |
| Red Hat Satellite 6.12 for RHEL 8 | RedHat | tfm-rubygem-activerecord-0:6.0.6-2.el8sat | * |
| Red Hat Satellite 6.13 for RHEL 8 | RedHat | tfm-rubygem-activerecord-0:6.1.7-1.el8sat | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | bionic | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | focal | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | kinetic | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | lunar | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | mantic | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | oracular | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | plucky | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | xenial | * |
| Rails-4.0 | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Ruby-actionpack-3.2 | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Ruby-activemodel-3.2 | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Ruby-activerecord-3.2 | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Ruby-activesupport-3.2 | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Ruby-rails-3.2 | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
Potential Mitigations
- Make fields transient to protect them from deserialization.
- An attempt to serialize and then deserialize a class containing transient fields will result in NULLs where the transient data should be. This is an excellent way to prevent time, environment-based, or sensitive variables from being carried over and used improperly.