CVE-2024-27281: RCE vulnerability with .rdoc_options in RDoc

Posted by hsbt on 21 Mar 2024

We have released the RDoc gem version 6.3.4.1, 6.4.1.1, 6.5.1.1 and 6.6.3.1 that have a security fix for a RCE vulnerability. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2024-27281.

Details

An issue was discovered in RDoc 6.3.3 through 6.6.2, as distributed in Ruby 3.x through 3.3.0.

When parsing .rdoc_options (used for configuration in RDoc) as a YAML file, object injection and resultant remote code execution are possible because there are no restrictions on the classes that can be restored.

When loading the documentation cache, object injection and resultant remote code execution are also possible if there were a crafted cache.

Recommended action

We recommend to update the RDoc gem to version 6.6.3.1 or later. In order to ensure compatibility with bundled version in older Ruby series, you may update as follows instead:

• For Ruby 3.0 users: Update to rdoc 6.3.4.1
• For Ruby 3.1 users: Update to rdoc 6.4.1.1
• For Ruby 3.2 users: Update to rdoc 6.5.1.1

You can use gem update rdoc to update it. If you are using bundler, please add gem "rdoc", ">= 6.6.3.1" to your Gemfile.

Note: 6.3.4, 6.4.1, 6.5.1 and 6.6.3 have a incorrect fix. We recommend to upgrade 6.3.4.1, 6.4.1.1, 6.5.1.1 and 6.6.3.1 instead of them.

Affected versions

• Ruby 3.0.6 or lower
• Ruby 3.1.4 or lower
• Ruby 3.2.3 or lower
• Ruby 3.3.0
• RDoc gem 6.3.3 or lower, 6.4.0 through 6.6.2 without the patch versions (6.3.4, 6.4.1, 6.5.1)

Credits

Thanks to ooooooo_q for discovering this issue.

History

• Originally published at 2024-03-21 4:00:00 (UTC)