CVE-2024-39316 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-1333 vulnerability in rack. A fix is available for rack — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Rack ReDoS Vulnerability in HTTP Accept Headers Parsing
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-2024-39316.
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
rackReal-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
Rack is a modular Ruby web server interface. Starting in version 3.1.0 and prior to version 3.1.5, Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability exists in the Rack::Request::Helpers module when parsing HTTP Accept headers. This vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker sending specially crafted Accept-Encoding or Accept-Language headers, causing the server to spend excessive time processing the request and leading to a Denial of Service (DoS). The fix for CVE-2024-26146 was not applied to the main branch and thus while the issue was fixed for the Rack v3.0 release series, it was not fixed in the v3.1 release series until v3.1.5. Users of versions on the 3.1 branch should upgrade to version 3.1.5 to receive the fix.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | rack | ≥ 3.1.0&&< 3.1.5 | 3.1.5bundle update rack --conservative |
Affected Products
rackrackDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for rack, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update rack to 3.1.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-39316 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-39316 in your dependencies?
Find it across RubyGems, including transitive dependencies.