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Fencer Intel
medium 4.3

CVE-2013-4287 json

RubyGems Regular Expression Denial of Service vulnerability

published 13y ago modified 4mo ago also GHSA-9j7m-rjqx-48vh , EUVD-2022-3399

cvss
4.3
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.3%
EPSS 3.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 88%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Algorithmic complexity vulnerability in Gem::Version::VERSION_PATTERN in lib/rubygems/version.rb in RubyGems before 1.8.23.1, 1.8.24 through 1.8.25, 2.0.x before 2.0.8, and 2.1.x before 2.1.0, as used in Ruby 1.9.0 through 2.0.0p247, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via a crafted gem version that triggers a large amount of backtracking in a regular expression.

Patch / fix

  • rubygems rubygems-update 1.8.23.1, 1.8.26, 2.0.8, 2.1.0
  • rubygems Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 3.2.0~rc.1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2013-4287

  • cumin enterprise mrg 2 0.1.5787-4.el6
  • rubygems enterprise mrg 2 1.8.23.2-1.el6
  • rubygems openshift 2.0 1.8.24-5.el6op
  • ruby193-ruby RHEL 1 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS, openstack 3 1.9.3.448-40.el6
  • ruby193-ruby-irb RHEL 1 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS, openstack 3 1.9.3.448-40.el6
  • ruby193-rubygems openstack 3 1.8.24-9.el6ost
  • ruby193-ruby-libs RHEL 1 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS, openstack 3 1.9.3.448-40.el6
  • ruby193-ruby-tcltk RHEL 1 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS, openstack 3 1.9.3.448-40.el6

red hat advisories RHSA-2013:1852RHSA-2014:0207RHSA-2013:1523RHSA-2013:1441RHSA-2013:1427

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2013-4287 updated cvss 2.6

rubygems: version regex algorithmic complexity vulnerability

  • Red Hat CloudForms Management Engine 5 rubygems
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 1 rubygems, ruby193-ruby
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 4 ruby193-rubygems
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Satellite 6 rubygems, ruby193-rubygems
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Subscription Asset Manager rubygems, ruby193-rubygems
    affected: workaround, no fix available, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) rubygems 1.3.7-4.el6_4 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional (v. 6) rubygems 1.3.7-4.el6_4
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1441
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 3.0 ruby193-ruby 1.9.3.448-40.el6, ruby193-rubygems 1.8.23-40.el6, ruby193-rubygems 1.8.24-9.el6ost, ruby193-ruby-irb 1.9.3.448-40.el6, ruby193-rubygem-json 1.5.5-40.el6, ruby193-ruby-libs 1.9.3.448-40.el6, +5 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1523
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 6) rubygems 1.3.7-4.el6_4 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 6) rubygems 1.3.7-4.el6_4
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1441
show 4 more
  • Red Hat MRG Grid Execute Node for RHEL 6 ComputeNode v.2 rubygems 1.8.23.2-1.el6 Red Hat MRG Grid for RHEL 6 Server v.2 cumin 0.1.5787-4.el6, rubygems 1.8.23.2-1.el6 Red Hat MRG Management for RHEL 6 Server v.2 cumin 0.1.5787-4.el6
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1852
  • Red Hat Software Collections 1 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) ruby193-ruby 1.9.3.448-40.el6, ruby193-rubygems 1.8.23-40.el6, ruby193-ruby-irb 1.9.3.448-40.el6, ruby193-rubygem-json 1.5.5-40.el6, ruby193-rubygem-rdoc 3.9.5-40.el6, ruby193-ruby-libs 1.9.3.448-40.el6, +5 more Red Hat Software Collections 1 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) ruby193-ruby 1.9.3.448-40.el6, ruby193-rubygems 1.8.23-40.el6, ruby193-ruby-irb 1.9.3.448-40.el6, ruby193-rubygem-json 1.5.5-40.el6, ruby193-rubygem-rdoc 3.9.5-40.el6, ruby193-ruby-libs 1.9.3.448-40.el6, +5 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1427
  • Red Hat RHOSE Client 2.0 rubygems 1.8.24-5.el6op Red Hat RHOSE Infrastructure 2.0 rubygems 1.8.24-5.el6op Red Hat RHOSE Node 2.0 rubygems 1.8.24-5.el6op
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:0207
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ruby, ruby-irb, rubygems, ruby-libs, ruby-tcltk, rubygem-json, +6 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

3.33% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
rubygems rubygems-update
<1.8.23.1
>=1.8.24, <1.8.26
>=2.0.0, <2.0.8
>=2.1.0.rc.1, <2.1.0
1.8.23.1
1.8.26
2.0.8
2.1.0

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-310 Cryptographic Issues
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.