A regular expression based DoS vulnerability in Action Dispatch <6.0.6.1,< 6.1.7.1, and <7.0.4.1. Specially crafted cookies, in combination with a specially crafted X_FORWARDED_HOST header can cause the regular expression engine to enter a state of catastrophic backtracking. This can cause the process to use large amounts of CPU and memory, leading to a possible DoS vulnerability All users running an affected release should either upgrade or use one of the workarounds immediately.
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rails | Rubyonrails | 3.0.0 (including) | 6.0.6.1 (excluding) |
| Rails | Rubyonrails | 6.1.0 (including) | 6.1.7.1 (excluding) |
| Rails | Rubyonrails | 7.0.0 (including) | 7.0.4.1 (excluding) |
| Red Hat Satellite 6.14 for RHEL 8 | RedHat | rubygem-actionpack-0:6.1.7.3-1.el8sat | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | bionic | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | focal | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | kinetic | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | lunar | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | mantic | * |
| Rails | Ubuntu | oracular | * |
| 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 | * |
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either:
The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question.
The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute – and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.