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CVE-2026-34230GHSA-V569-HP3G-36WR

Rack: Quadratic complexity in Rack::Utils.select_best_encoding via wildcard Accept-Encoding header

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
Fix
Fixed in 2.2.23, 3.1.21, 3.2.6
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
  • Exploitation: none
  • Automatable: yes
  • Technical impact: partial

Summary

Rack is a modular Ruby web server interface. Prior to versions 2.2.23, 3.1.21, and 3.2.6, Rack::Utils.select_best_encoding processes Accept-Encoding values with quadratic time complexity when the header contains many wildcard (*) entries. Because this method is used by Rack::Deflater to choose a response encoding, an unauthenticated attacker can send a single request with a crafted Accept-Encoding header and cause disproportionate CPU consumption on the compression middleware path. This results in a denial of service condition for applications using Rack::Deflater. This issue has been patched in versions 2.2.23, 3.1.21, and 3.2.6.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. CISA SSVC assessment

    Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

  3. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • rack rack

    fixed in 2.2.23; From 3.0.0.beta1 · fixed in 3.1.21; From 3.2.0 · fixed in 3.2.6

  • rackRubyGems

    fixed in 2.2.23

  • rackRubyGems

    From 3.0.0.beta1 · fixed in 3.1.21

  • rackRubyGems

    From 3.2.0 · fixed in 3.2.6

References 1

GitHub · rack/rack