Ruby on Rails: Several vulnerabilities

Background

Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework.

Description

The Ruby on Rails developers have corrected some weaknesses in action_controller/, relative to the handling of the user input and the LOAD_PATH variable. A remote attacker could inject arbitrary entries into the LOAD_PATH variable and alter the main Ruby on Rails process. The security hole has only been partly solved in version 1.1.5. Version 1.1.6 now fully corrects it.

Impact

A remote attacker that would exploit these weaknesses might cause a Denial of Service of the web framework and maybe inject arbitrary Ruby scripts.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Ruby on Rails users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-ruby/rails-1.1.6"