CVE-2016-0752 — actionview
HIGHCVE-2016-0752 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Path Traversal vulnerability in actionview. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-25) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available for actionview — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Directory traversal vulnerability in Action View in Ruby on Rails
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-25. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-04-15.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2016-0752.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2016-0752 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
actionview💎actionview💎actionpack💎actionpack💎actionpackReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Directory traversal vulnerability in Action View in Ruby on Rails before 3.2.22.1, 4.0.x and 4.1.x before 4.1.14.1, 4.2.x before 4.2.5.1, and 5.x before 5.0.0.beta1.1 allows remote attackers to read arbitrary files by leveraging an application's unrestricted use of the render method and providing a .. (dot dot) in a pathname.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | actionview | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 4.1.14.1 | 4.1.14.1bundle update actionview --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | actionview | ≥ 4.2.0&&< 4.2.5.1 | 4.2.5.1bundle update actionview --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | actionpack | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 4.1.14.1 | 4.1.14.1bundle update actionpack --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | actionpack | ≥ 4.2.0&&< 4.2.5.1 | 4.2.5.1bundle update actionpack --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | actionpack | all versions | 3.2.22.1bundle update actionpack --conservative |
Affected Products
debian linuxdebianleapopensuseopensuseopensusesoftware collectionsredhatrailsrubyonrailslinux enterprise module for containerssuseResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Ruby on Rails - Dynamic Render File Upload / Remote Code Execution (Metasploit)
by Metasploit · Oct 17, 2016
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for actionview, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update actionview to 4.1.14.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2016-0752 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Avoid passing untrusted input to render method, or verify the input using whitelist before passing it to the render method: ``` def index render verify_template(params[:id]) end private def verify_template(name) # add verification logic particular to your application here end ```Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2016-0752 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | rh-ror41-rubygem-actionpack-1:4.1.5-3.el6 | RHSA-2016:0296 |
| Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | ror40-rubygem-actionpack-1:4.0.2-7.el6 | RHSA-2016:0454 |
| Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | ruby193-rubygem-actionpack-1:3.2.8-16.el6 | RHSA-2016:0455 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-0752 in your dependencies?
Find it across RubyGems, including transitive dependencies.