Impact

Under certain circumstances response bodies will not be closed, for example a bug in a webserver (https://github.com/puma/puma/pull/2812) or a bug in a Rack middleware. In the event a response is not notified of a close, ActionDispatch::Executor will not know to reset thread local state for the next request. This can lead to data being leaked to subsequent requests, especially when interacting with ActiveSupport::CurrentAttributes.

Upgrading to the FIXED versions of Rails will ensure mitigation if this issue even in the context of a buggy webserver or middleware implementation.

Patches

This has been fixed in Rails 7.0.2.2, 6.1.4.6, 6.0.4.6, and 5.2.6.2.

Workarounds

Upgrading is highly recommended, but to work around this problem the following middleware can be used:

class GuardedExecutor < ActionDispatch::Executor
  def call(env)
    ensure_completed!
    super
  end

  private

    def ensure_completed!
      @executor.new.complete! if @executor.active?
    end
end

# Ensure the guard is inserted before ActionDispatch::Executor
Rails.application.configure do
  config.middleware.swap ActionDispatch::Executor, GuardedExecutor, executor
end

There is a possible open redirect vulnerability in the Host Authorization middleware in Action Pack. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-22942.

Versions Affected: >= 6.0.0. Not affected: < 6.0.0 Fixed Versions: 6.1.4.1, 6.0.4.1

Impact

Specially crafted “X-Forwarded-Host” headers in combination with certain “allowed host” formats can cause the Host Authorization middleware in Action Pack to redirect users to a malicious website.

Impacted applications will have allowed hosts with a leading dot. For example, configuration files that look like this:

config.hosts <<  '.EXAMPLE.com'

When an allowed host contains a leading dot, a specially crafted Host header can be used to redirect to a malicious website.

This vulnerability is similar to CVE-2021-22881, but CVE-2021-22881 did not take in to account domain name case sensitivity.

Releases

The fixed releases are available at the normal locations.

Workarounds

In the case a patch can’t be applied, the following monkey patch can be used in an initializer:

module ActionDispatch
  class HostAuthorization
    HOSTNAME = /[a-z0-9.-]+|\[[a-f0-9]*:[a-f0-9.:]+\]/i
    VALID_ORIGIN_HOST = /\A(#{HOSTNAME})(?::\d+)?\z/
    VALID_FORWARDED_HOST = /(?:\A|,[ ]?)(#{HOSTNAME})(?::\d+)?\z/

    private
      def authorized?(request)
        origin_host =
          request.get_header("HTTP_HOST")&.slice(VALID_ORIGIN_HOST, 1) || ""
        forwarded_host =
          request.x_forwarded_host&.slice(VALID_FORWARDED_HOST, 1) || ""
        @permissions.allows?(origin_host) &&
          (forwarded_host.blank? || @permissions.allows?(forwarded_host))
      end
  end
end

There is a possible DoS vulnerability in the Token Authentication logic in Action Controller. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-22904.

Versions Affected: >= 4.0.0 Not affected: < 4.0.0 Fixed Versions: 6.1.3.2, 6.0.3.7, 5.2.4.6, 5.2.6

Impact

Impacted code uses authenticate_or_request_with_http_token or authenticate_with_http_token for request authentication. Impacted code will look something like this:

class PostsController < ApplicationController
  before_action :authenticate

  private

  def authenticate
    authenticate_or_request_with_http_token do |token, options|
      # ...
    end
  end
end

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

The following monkey patch placed in an initializer can be used to work around the issue:

module ActionController::HttpAuthentication::Token
  AUTHN_PAIR_DELIMITERS = /(?:,|;|\t)/
end

There is a possible Denial of Service vulnerability in the Mime type parser of Action Dispatch. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-22902.

Versions Affected: >= 6.0.0 Not affected: < 6.0.0 Fixed Versions: 6.0.3.7, 6.1.3.2

Impact

There is a possible Denial of Service vulnerability in Action Dispatch. Carefully crafted Accept headers can cause the mime type parser in Action Dispatch to do catastrophic backtracking in the regular expression engine.

Workarounds

The following monkey patch placed in an initializer can be used to work around the issue:

module Mime
  class Type
    MIME_REGEXP = /\A(?:\*\/\*|#{MIME_NAME}\/(?:\*|#{MIME_NAME})(?>\s*#{MIME_PARAMETER}\s*)*)\z/
  end
end

There is a possible information disclosure / unintended method execution vulnerability in Action Pack which has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-22885.

Versions Affected: >= 2.0.0. Not affected: < 2.0.0. Fixed Versions: 6.1.3.2, 6.0.3.7, 5.2.4.6, 5.2.6

Impact

There is a possible information disclosure / unintended method execution vulnerability in Action Pack when using the redirect_to or polymorphic_url helper with untrusted user input.

Vulnerable code will look like this:

redirect_to(params[:some_param])

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

Workarounds

To work around this problem, it is recommended to use an allow list for valid parameters passed from the user. For example:

private def check(param)
  case param
  when "valid"
    param
  else
    "/"
  end
end

def index
  redirect_to(check(params[:some_param]))
end

Or force the user input to be cast to a string like this:

def index
  redirect_to(params[:some_param].to_s)
end