GLSA 201001-09: Ruby: Terminal Control Character Injection

Severity:normal
Title:Ruby: Terminal Control Character Injection
Date:01/14/2010
Bugs: #300468
ID:201001-09

Synopsis

An input sanitation flaw in the WEBrick HTTP server included in Ruby might allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary control characters into terminal sessions.

Background

Ruby is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It comes bundled with a HTTP server ("WEBrick").

Affected packages

Package Vulnerable Unaffected Architecture(s)
dev-lang/ruby < 1.8.7_p249 >= 1.8.7_p249 All supported architectures

Description

Giovanni Pellerano, Alessandro Tanasi and Francesco Ongaro reported that WEBrick does not filter terminal control characters, for instance when handling HTTP logs.

Impact

A remote attacker could send a specially crafted HTTP request to a WEBrick server to inject arbitrary terminal control characters, possibly resulting in the execution of arbitrary commands, data loss, or other unspecified impact. This could also be used to facilitate other attacks.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Ruby 1.8.7 users should upgrade to the latest version:

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-lang/ruby-1.8.7_p249"

All Ruby 1.8.6 users should upgrade to the latest version:

# emerge --sync # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-lang/ruby-1.8.6_p388"

References

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-201001-09.xml

Concerns?

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to security@gentoo.org or alternatively, you may file a bug at https://bugs.gentoo.org.

License

Copyright 2010 Gentoo Foundation, Inc; referenced text belongs to its owner(s). The contents of this document are licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike license.

Thank you!