USN-20-1: Ruby CGI module vulnerability

9 November 2004

Ruby CGI module vulnerability

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Releases

Details

The Ruby developers discovered a potential Denial of Service
vulnerability in the CGI module (cgi.rb). Specially crafted CGI
requests could cause an infinite loop in the server process.
Repetitive attacks could use most of the available processor
resources, exhaust the number of allowed parallel connections in web
servers, or cause similar effects which render the service
unavailable.

There is no possibility of privilege escalation or data loss.

Reduce your security exposure

Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 4.10
  • libruby1.8 -

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References

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Further reading