ALAS-2013-173


Amazon Linux 1 Security Advisory: ALAS-2013-173
Advisory Release Date: 2013-03-14 22:04 Pacific
Advisory Updated Date: 2014-09-15 22:42 Pacific
Severity: Medium

Issue Overview:

It was discovered that Ruby's REXML library did not properly restrict XML entity expansion. An attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service by tricking a Ruby application using REXML to read text nodes from specially-crafted XML content, which will result in REXML consuming large amounts of system memory. (CVE-2013-1821)

It was found that the RHSA-2011:0910 update did not correctly fix the CVE-2011-1005 issue, a flaw in the method for translating an exception message into a string in the Exception class. A remote attacker could use this flaw to bypass safe level 4 restrictions, allowing untrusted (tainted) code to modify arbitrary, trusted (untainted) strings, which safe level 4 restrictions would otherwise prevent. (CVE-2012-4481)

The safe-level feature in Ruby 1.8.6 through 1.8.6-420, 1.8.7 through 1.8.7-330, and 1.8.8dev allows context-dependent attackers to modify strings via the Exception#to_s method, as demonstrated by changing an intended pathname. (CVE-2011-1005)


Affected Packages:

ruby


Issue Correction:
Run yum update ruby to update your system.

New Packages:
i686:
    ruby-ri-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.i686
    ruby-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.i686
    ruby-devel-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.i686
    ruby-libs-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.i686
    ruby-static-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.i686
    ruby-debuginfo-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.i686

noarch:
    ruby-irb-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.noarch
    ruby-rdoc-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.noarch

src:
    ruby-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.src

x86_64:
    ruby-ri-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.x86_64
    ruby-libs-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.x86_64
    ruby-static-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.x86_64
    ruby-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.x86_64
    ruby-devel-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.x86_64
    ruby-debuginfo-1.8.7.371-2.25.amzn1.x86_64