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actionview contains Path Traversal vulnerability

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Oct 24, 2017 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Nov 8, 2023

Package

bundler actionpack (RubyGems)

Affected versions

>= 3.0.0, <= 3.2.22.1
>= 4.0.0, <= 4.1.14.1

Patched versions

3.2.22.2
4.1.14.2
bundler actionview (RubyGems)
>= 3.0.0, <= 3.2.22.1
>= 4.0.0, <= 4.1.14.1
3.2.22.2
4.1.14.2

Description

There is a possible directory traversal and information leak vulnerability in Action View. This was meant to be fixed on CVE-2016-0752. However the 3.2 patch was not covering all possible scenarios. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2016-2097.

Versions Affected: 3.2.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x
Not affected: 4.2+
Fixed Versions: 3.2.22.2, 4.1.14.2

Impact

Applications that pass unverified user input to the render method in a controller may be vulnerable to an information leak vulnerability.

Impacted code will look something like this:

def index
  render params[:id]
end

Carefully crafted requests can cause the above code to render files from unexpected places like outside the application's view directory, and can possibly escalate this to a remote code execution attack.

All users running an affected release should either upgrade or use one of the workarounds immediately.

Releases

The FIXED releases are available at the normal locations.

Workarounds

A workaround to this issue is to not pass arbitrary user input to the render method. Instead, verify that data before passing it to the render method.

For example, change this:

def index
  render params[:id]
end

To this:

def index
  render verify_template(params[:id])
end

private
def verify_template(name)
  # add verification logic particular to your application here
end

Patches

To aid users who aren't able to upgrade immediately we have provided patches for it. It is in git-am format and consist of a single changeset.

  • 3-2-render_data_leak_2.patch - Patch for 3.2 series
  • 4-1-render_data_leak_2.patch - Patch for 4.1 series

Credits

Thanks to both Jyoti Singh and Tobias Kraze from makandra for reporting this and working with us in the patch!

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Apr 7, 2016
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Oct 24, 2017
Reviewed Jun 16, 2020
Last updated Nov 8, 2023

Severity

Moderate
5.3
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
None
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2016-2097

GHSA ID

GHSA-vx9j-46rh-fqr8

Source code

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