Ruby: Denial of Service issue

Background

Ruby is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. Ruby’s CGI module can be used to build web applications.

Description

Ruby’s developers found and fixed an issue in the CGI module that can be triggered remotely and cause an infinite loop.

Impact

A remote attacker could trigger the vulnerability through an exposed Ruby web application and cause the server to use unnecessary CPU resources, potentially resulting in a Denial of Service.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Ruby 1.6.x users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-lang/ruby-1.6.8-r12"

All Ruby 1.8.x users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-lang/ruby-1.8.2_pre3"