GHSA-fhj9-cjjh-27vm CVE-2013-0277

Active Record contains deserialization of arbitrary YAML

Critical RubyGems

Severity: Critical; The publisher's own rating, not a CVSS score
Exploit chance (EPSS): 7.50%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 94.48% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data
Fix: 2.3.17; Upgrade activerecord to this version or later

Description

ActiveRecord in Ruby on Rails before 2.3.17 and 3.x before 3.1.0 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary code via crafted serialized attributes that cause the +serialize+ helper to deserialize arbitrary YAML.

Affected versions

RubyGems

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
activerecord	`< 2.3.17`	`2.3.17`
activerecord	`>= 3.0.0, < 3.1.0`	`3.1.0`

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 → `2.3.17`

bundler

bundle update activerecord # Gemfile: gem "activerecord", ">= 2.3.17"

Weakness

CWE-502: Deserialization of Untrusted Data

The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently ensuring that the resulting data will be valid.

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design, Implementation: If available, use the signing/sealing features of the programming language to assure that deserialized data has not been tainted. For example, a hash-based message authentication code (HMAC) could be used to ensure that data has not been modified.
Implementation: When deserializing data, populate a new object rather than just deserializing. The result is that the data flows through safe input validation and that the functions are safe.
Implementation: Explicitly define a final object() to prevent deserialization.
Architecture and Design, Implementation: 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.
Implementation: Avoid having unnecessary types or gadgets (a sequence of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process, often found in libraries) available that can be leveraged for malicious ends. This limits the potential for unintended or unauthorized types and gadgets to be leveraged by the attacker. Add only acceptable classes to an allowlist. Note: new gadgets are constantly being discovered, so this alone is not a sufficient mitigation.
Architecture and Design, Implementation: Employ cryptography of the data or code for protection. However, it's important to note that it would still be client-side security. This is risky because if the client is compromised then the security implemented on the client (the cryptography) can be bypassed.
Operation: Use an application firewall that can detect attacks against this weakness. It can be beneficial in cases in which the code cannot be fixed (because it is controlled by a third party), as an emergency prevention measure while more comprehensive software assurance measures are applied, or to provide defense in depth [REF-1481].

References

Advisories

nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2013-0277

Packages

github.com/rails/rails/tree/v6.1.4.1/activerecord

Timeline

Oct 24, 2017 Published
Dec 3, 2024 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

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-8hc4-xxm3-5ppp Active Record subject to Regular Expression Denial-of-Service (ReDoS)	High	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

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