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Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection')

CVE-2020-5247

Severity High
Score 7.5/10

Summary

In Puma (RubyGem) before 3.12.3 and 4.x before 4.3.2, if an application using Puma allows untrusted input in a response header, an attacker can use newline characters (i.e. `CR`, `LF` or`/r`, `/n`) to end the header and inject malicious content, such as additional headers or an entirely new response body. This vulnerability is known as HTTP Response Splitting. While not an attack in itself, response splitting is a vector for several other attacks, such as cross-site scripting (XSS). This is related to CVE-2019-16254, which fixed this vulnerability for the WEBrick Ruby web server. This has been fixed in versions 4.3.2 and 3.12.3 by checking all headers for line endings and rejecting headers with those characters.

  • LOW
  • NETWORK
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • NONE

CWE-74 - Injection

Listed as the number one web application security risk on the 'OWASP Top Ten', injection attacks are widespread and dangerous, especially in legacy applications. Injection attacks are a class of vulnerabilities in which an attacker injects untrusted data into a web application that gets processed by an interpreter, altering the program's execution. This can result in data loss/theft, loss of data integrity, denial of service, and even compromising the entire system.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published