GHSA-8hc4-xxm3-5ppp CVE-2021-22880
Active Record subject to Regular Expression Denial-of-Service (ReDoS)
- Severity
- 7.5 / 10
- High · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 4.43%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 91.39% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- Fix
5.2.4.5- Upgrade activerecord to this version or later
Description
The PostgreSQL adapter in Active Record before 6.1.2.1, 6.0.3.5, 5.2.4.5 suffers from a regular expression denial of service (REDoS) vulnerability. Carefully crafted input can cause the input validation in the money type of the PostgreSQL adapter in Active Record to spend too much time in a regular expression, resulting in the potential for a DoS attack. This only impacts Rails applications that are using PostgreSQL along with money type columns that take user input.
Affected versions
RubyGems
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| activerecord | >= 5.0.0, < 5.2.4.5 |
5.2.4.5 |
| activerecord | >= 6.0.0, < 6.0.3.5 |
6.0.3.5 |
| activerecord | >= 6.1.0, < 6.1.2.1 |
6.1.2.1 |
How to fix
Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.
activerecord RubyGems → 5.2.4.5
- bundler
bundle update activerecord # Gemfile: gem "activerecord", ">= 5.2.4.5"
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 7.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Weakness
CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
- Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. 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.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
- Implementation: Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.
References
Advisories
Other links
- hackerone.com/reports/1023899
- discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/cve-2021-22880-possible-dos-vulnerability-in-active-record-postgre…
- github.com/rails/rails
- github.com/rubysec/ruby-advisory-db/blob/master/gems/activerecord/CVE-2021-2288…
- groups.google.com/g/rubyonrails-security/c/ZzUqCh9vyhI
- lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MO5OJ…
- lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/XQ3NS…
- security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20210805-0009
- debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4929
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-76r7-hhxj-r776 Active Record logging vulnerable to ANSI escape injection | Medium | Also affects activerecord |
| GHSA-579w-22j4-4749 Denial of Service Vulnerability in ActiveRecord's PostgreSQL adapter | High | Also affects activerecord |
| GHSA-hq7p-j377-6v63 SQL Injection Vulnerability via ActiveRecord comments | High | Also affects activerecord |
| GHSA-3hhc-qp5v-9p2j Active Record RCE bug with Serialized Columns | Critical | Also affects activerecord |
| GHSA-f57c-hx33-hvh8 Active Record component in Ruby on Rails has a data-type injection vulnerability | Critical | Also affects activerecord |
| GHSA-xf96-32q2-9rw2 Rails ActiveRecord gem vulnerable to SQL injection | High | Also affects activerecord |
| GHSA-jmm9-2p29-vh2w activerecord vulnerable to SQL Injection | High | Also affects activerecord |
| GHSA-h6w6-xmqv-7q78 activerecord vulnerable to SQL Injection | High | Also affects activerecord |
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