CVE-2026-34763 — rack
MEDIUMCVE-2026-34763 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-625 vulnerability in rack. A fix is available for rack — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Rack: Rack::Directory info disclosure and DoS via unescaped regex interpolation
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-2026-34763.
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
rack💎rack💎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
Summary
Rack::Directory interpolates the configured root path directly into a regular expression when deriving the displayed directory path. If root contains regex metacharacters such as +, *, or ., the prefix stripping can fail and the generated directory listing may expose the full filesystem path in the HTML output.
Details
Rack::Directory::DirectoryBody#each computes the visible path using code equivalent to:
show_path = Utils.escape_html(path.sub(/\A#{root}/, ''))
Here, root is a developer-configured filesystem path. It is normalized earlier with File.expand_path(root) and then inserted directly into a regular expression without escaping.
Because the value is treated as regex syntax rather than as a literal string, metacharacters in the configured path can change how the prefix match behaves. When that happens, the expected root prefix is not removed from path, and the absolute filesystem path is rendered into the HTML directory listing.
Impact
If Rack::Directory is configured to serve a directory whose absolute path contains regex metacharacters, the generated directory listing may disclose the full server filesystem path instead of only the request-relative path.
This can expose internal deployment details such as directory layout, usernames, mount points, or naming conventions that would otherwise not be visible to clients.
Mitigation
- Update to a patched version of Rack in which the root prefix is removed using an escaped regular expression.
- Avoid using
Rack::Directorywith a root path that contains regular expression metacharacters.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | rack | all versions | 2.2.23bundle update rack --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | rack | ≥ 3.0.0.beta1&&< 3.1.21 | 3.1.21bundle update rack --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | rack | ≥ 3.2.0&&< 3.2.6 | 3.2.6bundle 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 2.2.23 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-34763 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.
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-34763 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-34763 in your dependencies?
Find it across RubyGems, including transitive dependencies.