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GHSA-wfrc-r6c6-7j9r CVE-2008-4310

WEBrick Denial of Service Vulnerability

High RubyGems
Severity
High
The publisher's own rating, not a CVSS score
Exploit chance (EPSS)
13.55%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 96.46% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Fix
1.3.1
Upgrade webrick to this version or later

Description

httputils.rb in WEBrick in Ruby 1.8.1 and 1.8.5, as used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via a crafted HTTP request. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2008-3656.

Affected versions

RubyGems

PackageVulnerableFixed in
webrick
< 1.3.1
1.3.1

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.

webrick RubyGems → 1.3.1

bundler
bundle update webrick # Gemfile: gem "webrick", ">= 1.3.1"

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

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
  3. Latest EPSS score
AdvisorySeverityWhy it's related
GHSA-r995-q44h-hr64
Ruby WEBrick read_headers method can lead to HTTP Request/Response Smuggling
Medium Also affects webrick
GHSA-6f62-3596-g6w7
HTTP Request Smuggling in ruby webrick
High Also affects webrick
GHSA-gwfg-cqmg-cf8f
WEBRick vulnerable to HTTP Request/Response Smuggling
High Also affects webrick
GHSA-369m-2gv6-mw28
WEBrick RCE Vulnerability
High Also affects webrick
GHSA-6mq2-37j5-w6r6
WEBrick Improper Input Validation vulnerability
Medium Also affects webrick
GHSA-cggf-277g-3q54
pypdf has possible large memory usage when parsing page tree
High Same weakness, CWE-400
GHSA-3g3m-2fjr-6pw4
Glob: AbortSignal cancellation bypass allows post-timeout filesystem traversal
Medium Same weakness, CWE-400
GHSA-42gh-23hr-vphw
pypdf has possible long runtimes when retrieving page labels
High Same weakness, CWE-400
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