CVE-2018-16477 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor in activestorage
Attackers can execute inline HTML via Active Storage bypass, potentially accessing private signed URLs and causing XSS.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2018-16477?
CVE-2018-16477 is a medium-severity cross-site scripting vulnerability in Rubyonrails Rails, published on 30 Nov 2018. 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
A bypass vulnerability in Active Storage >= 5.2.0 for Google Cloud Storage and Disk services allow an attacker to modify the `content-disposition` and `content-type` parameters which can be used in with HTML files and have them executed inline. Additionally, if combined with other techniques such as cookie bombing and specially crafted AppCache manifests, an attacker can gain access to private signed URLs within a specific storage path. This vulnerability has been fixed in version 5.2.1.1.
Weakness: CWE-200
Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-16477?
2 open source packages ship an affected version, including activestorage. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
activestorage RubyGems | From 5.2.0 | 5.2.1.1 |
activestorage RubyGems | From 5.2.0 | 5.2.1.1 |
Products include Rubyonrails Rails.
How do I fix CVE-2018-16477?
Upgrade activestorage to 5.2.1.1 or later.
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-2018-16477 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-16477 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Rubyonrails Rails
- CVE-2013-0277 Active Record contains deserialization of arbitrary YAML
- CVE-2017-17916 SQL injection in n/a
- CVE-2017-17917 SQL injection in n/a
- CVE-2026-33195 Rails Active Storage has possible Path Traversal in DiskService
- CVE-2024-26142 Rails possible ReDoS vulnerability in Accept header parsing in Action Dispatch
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2018-16477, GHSA-7rr7-rcjw-56vj.