CVE-2023-28756 — time
HIGHCVE-2023-28756 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-1333 vulnerability in time. A fix is available for time — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Ruby Time component ReDoS issue
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-28756.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
time💎timeReal-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
A ReDoS issue was discovered in the Time component through 0.2.1 in Ruby through 3.2.1. The Time parser mishandles invalid URLs that have specific characters. It causes an increase in execution time for parsing strings to Time objects. The fixed versions are 0.1.1 and 0.2.2.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | time | ≥ 0.2.0&&< 0.2.2 | 0.2.2bundle update time --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | time | all versions | 0.1.1bundle update time --conservative |
Affected Products
debian linuxdebianfedorafedoraprojectrubyruby-langtimeruby-langDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for time, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update time to 0.2.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-28756 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
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.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | ruby:2.7-8080020230427102918.63b34585 | RHSA-2023:3821 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | ruby:2.5-8090020230627084142.b46abd14 | RHSA-2023:7025 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | ruby:3.1-8090020240311122605.a75119d5 | RHSA-2024:1431 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | ruby:3.0-8100020240522072634.489197e6 | RHSA-2024:3500 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | ruby:3.1-9030020240320163942.9 | RHSA-2024:1576 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | ruby-0:3.0.7-162.el9_4 | RHSA-2024:3838 |
| Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | rh-ruby27-ruby-0:2.7.8-132.el7 | RHSA-2023:3291 |
| Red Hat Hardened Images | ruby3-3-main-3.3.10-23.1.hum1 | RHSA-2026:7305 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-28756 in your dependencies?
Find it across RubyGems, including transitive dependencies.