RHSA-2008:0897: Moderate: ruby security update

First published: Tue Oct 21 2008(Updated: )

Ruby is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy<br>object-oriented programming.<br>The Ruby DNS resolver library, resolv.rb, used predictable transaction IDs<br>and a fixed source port when sending DNS requests. A remote attacker could<br>use this flaw to spoof a malicious reply to a DNS query. (CVE-2008-3905)<br>Ruby's XML document parsing module (REXML) was prone to a denial of service<br>attack via XML documents with large XML entity definitions recursion. A<br>specially-crafted XML file could cause a Ruby application using the REXML<br>module to use an excessive amount of CPU and memory. (CVE-2008-3790)<br>An insufficient "taintness" check flaw was discovered in Ruby's DL module,<br>which provides direct access to the C language functions. An attacker could<br>use this flaw to bypass intended safe-level restrictions by calling<br>external C functions with the arguments from an untrusted tainted inputs.<br>(CVE-2008-3657)<br>A denial of service flaw was discovered in WEBrick, Ruby's HTTP server<br>toolkit. A remote attacker could send a specially-crafted HTTP request to a<br>WEBrick server that would cause the server to use an excessive amount of<br>CPU time. (CVE-2008-3656)<br>A number of flaws were found in the safe-level restrictions in Ruby. It<br>was possible for an attacker to create a carefully crafted malicious script<br>that can allow the bypass of certain safe-level restrictions. (CVE-2008-3655)<br>A denial of service flaw was found in Ruby's regular expression engine. If<br>a Ruby script tried to process a large amount of data via a regular<br>expression, it could cause Ruby to enter an infinite-loop and crash.<br>(CVE-2008-3443)<br>Users of ruby should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain<br>backported patches to resolve these issues.

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