# CVE-2014-3916: Denial of service in n/a

> Attackers can cause a denial of service via a segmentation fault in Ruby's string handling by providing a long string.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.0 (`AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not stated
- **Attackable:** Not stated
- **Victim action needed:** Not stated
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 16 Nov 2014
- **Updated:** 6 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-252h-69rw-g2rp

## What is CVE-2014-3916?

CVE-2014-3916 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Rubyonrails Rails, published on 16 Nov 2014. 

### Official description

The str_buf_cat function in string.c in Ruby 1.9.3, 2.0.0, and 2.1 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (segmentation fault and crash) via a long string.

Weakness: CWE-19

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2014-3916?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Rubyonrails Rails.

## How do I fix CVE-2014-3916?

No fix has been published for CVE-2014-3916 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2014-3916 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2014-3916 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Rubyonrails Rails

- [CVE-2013-0277](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-0277/): Active Record contains deserialization of arbitrary YAML (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2017-17916](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-17916/): SQL injection in n/a (high 8.1)
- [CVE-2017-17917](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-17917/): SQL injection in n/a (high 8.1)
- [CVE-2026-33195](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-33195/): Rails Active Storage has possible Path Traversal in DiskService (high 8.0)
- [CVE-2024-26142](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-26142/): Rails possible ReDoS vulnerability in Accept header parsing in Action Dispatch (high 7.5)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2014-3916 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2014-3916 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Rubyonrails Rails, published on 16 Nov 2014. 
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2014-3916 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Rubyonrails Rails. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-3916/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-3916/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2014-3916
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2014-3916
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2014-3916

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-3916/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.