CVE-2013-4491 actionpack vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting

What is CVE-2013-4491?

CVE-2013-4491 is a medium-severity cross-site scripting vulnerability in Rubyonrails Rails, published on 7 Dec 2013. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/translation_helper.rb in the internationalization component in Ruby on Rails 3.x before 3.2.16 and 4.x before 4.0.2 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via a crafted string that triggers generation of a fallback string by the i18n gem.

Weakness: CWE-79

Which versions are affected by CVE-2013-4491?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including actionpack. It affects 2 products.

Products include Rubyonrails Rails, Rubyonrails Ruby on Rails.

How do I fix CVE-2013-4491?

Upgrade actionpack to a fixed version for your release line: 3.2.16 or 4.0.2.

Escape output for the context it lands in and set a strict Content Security Policy. Upgrading the affected component is the real fix. More about Cross-site scripting.

Is CVE-2013-4491 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2013-4491 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Rubyonrails Rails

• CVE-2013-0277 Active Record contains deserialization of arbitrary YAML Critical 10.0
• CVE-2017-17916 SQL injection in n/a High 8.1
• CVE-2017-17917 SQL injection in n/a High 8.1
• CVE-2026-33195 Rails Active Storage has possible Path Traversal in DiskService High 8.0
• CVE-2024-26142 Rails possible ReDoS vulnerability in Accept header parsing in Action Dispatch High 7.5

All Rubyonrails Rails vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-699m-mcjm-9cw8.