VulnerabilityPublished 23 Mar 2026

CVE-2026-33169: rails activesupport · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects rails activesupportSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.9 Medium · fixed in 8.1.2.1 : update rails activesupport when convenient.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 11:52 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score

6.9Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 51% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 8.1.2.1, 8.0.4.1, 7.2.3.1

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Attack Requirements: None
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None
Vulnerable system integrity: None
Vulnerable system availability: Low
Subsequent system confidentiality: None
Subsequent system integrity: None
Subsequent system availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable system is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed below, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed “remotely exploitable” and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: None: The successful attack does not depend on the deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system. The attacker can expect to be able to reach the vulnerability and execute the exploit under all or most instances of the vulnerability.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files of the vulnerable system to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the Vulnerable System are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Subsequent System or all availability impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 23 Mar 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 30 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade rails activesupport to 8.1.2.1, 8.0.4.1 or 7.2.3.1.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
railsactivesupport	Affected >=8.1.0.beta1 <8.1.2.1	Fixed in 8.1.2.1
railsactivesupport	Affected >=8.0.0.beta1 <8.0.4.1	Fixed in 8.0.4.1
railsactivesupport	Affected <7.2.3.1	Fixed in 7.2.3.1
RubyGemsactivesupport`pkg:gem/activesupport`Other threats	Affected <7.2.3.1 <8.0.4.1 <8.1.2.1	Fixed in 7.2.3.1 8.0.4.1 8.1.2.1

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2026-33169, organizations should immediately upgrade Active Support to versions 8.1.2.1, 8.0.4.1, or 7.2.3.1 or later, where the regular expression inefficiency has been fixed. For environments where immediate upgrading is not feasible, consider implementing input validation or limiting the length of numeric strings processed by NumberToDelimitedConverter to reduce the risk of triggering the quadratic behavior. Monitoring application performance and setting resource usage thresholds can help detect exploitation attempts early. Additionally, employing web application firewalls (WAFs) to detect and block suspicious input patterns targeting this vulnerability can provide a temporary protective layer. Developers should review their use of Active Support’s number formatting features and avoid processing untrusted or excessively long digit strings without proper sanitization. Regularly auditing dependencies and applying security patches promptly is critical to maintaining resilience against such resource exhaustion attacks.

Description

Active Support is a toolkit of support libraries and Ruby core extensions extracted from the Rails framework. `NumberToDelimitedConverter` uses a lookahead-based regular expression with `gsub!` to insert thousands delimiters. Prior to versions 8.1.2.1, 8.0.4.1, and 7.2.3.1, the interaction between the repeated lookahead group and `gsub!` can produce quadratic time complexity on long digit strings. Versions 8.1.2.1, 8.0.4.1, and 7.2.3.1 contain a patch.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2026-33169 is the potential for denial of service through resource exhaustion. Attackers can exploit the inefficient regular expression to cause high CPU usage, slowing down or crashing web applications that rely on vulnerable versions of Active Support. This can lead to service outages, degraded performance, and increased operational costs due to resource overuse. Organizations running Ruby on Rails applications with affected Active Support versions are at risk of disruption, which can affect customer trust and business continuity. Since the vulnerability requires no authentication or user interaction, it can be exploited remotely and anonymously, increasing the attack surface. Although it does not directly compromise data confidentiality or integrity, the availability impact can be severe, especially for high-traffic or critical web services. The widespread use of Rails in many industries including finance, e-commerce, and technology means the potential scope of impact is broad.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-1333Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product uses a regular expression with a worst-case computational complexity that is inefficient and possibly exponential.
Architecture and Design
Use regular expressions that do not support backtracking, e.g. by removing nested quantifiers.
System Configuration
Set backtracking limits in the configuration of the regular expression implementation, such as PHP's pcre.backtrack_limit. Also consider limits on execution time for the process.
Implementation
Do not use regular expressions with untrusted input. If regular expressions must be used, avoid using backtracking in the expression.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 24 Mar 2026, 00:05 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400, CWE-1333

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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