CVE-2024-39908VulnerabilityPublished 18 Sep 2024Updated 2 Nov 2026

Red Hat Security Advisory: ruby:3.3 security update

Affects Red Hat ruby:3.3Source GCVE Database

Compare

Mentioned vulnerabilities

Authoritative record:CVE-2024-39908· Medium 4.3

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.3 Medium : upgrade Red Hat rexml to 3.3.2 when convenient.

Data as of 2 Nov 2026, 03:13 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.3Medium

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

Thin evidence

One scorer or none

CVSS scores by source
CNA (GitHub_M)	CVSS 3.1	4.3

Patch: Available – fixed in 3.3.2

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: Low

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

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, 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: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
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 impacted component 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 impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 16 Jul 2024
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 1 Nov 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 rexml to 3.3.2.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
RubyGemsrexml`pkg:gem/rexml`Other threats	Affected <3.3.2	Fixed in 3.3.2

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

AI-suggested

Red Hat has released updated ruby:3.3 module packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 that include fixes for these REXML DoS vulnerabilities. Users should apply the security update as described in the Red Hat advisory RHSA-2024:6784 and the referenced article https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258 to remediate these issues. No additional mitigation steps are indicated by the vendor.

Description

Multiple denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerabilities have been identified in the REXML library used by Ruby 3.3. These vulnerabilities can be triggered by parsing specially crafted XML documents containing many specific characters such as whitespace, >], and ]>. Red Hat has issued a security advisory with updates to address these issues in the ruby:3.3 module for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

Impact

Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to cause a denial-of-service condition by triggering excessive resource consumption during XML parsing in applications using the vulnerable REXML library. This could lead to application or system unavailability. There is no indication of remote code execution or data compromise. No known exploits in the wild have been reported.

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-776Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs (Billion Laughs Attack) (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: MediumOWASP Top 10 A02:2025: Security Misconfiguration (opens in a new tab)
The product uses XML documents and allows their structure to be defined with a Document Type Definition (DTD), but it does not properly control the number of recursive definitions of entities.
Operation
If possible, prohibit the use of DTDs or use an XML parser that limits the expansion of recursive DTD entities.
Implementation
Before parsing XML files with associated DTDs, scan for recursive entity declarations and do not continue parsing potentially explosive content.
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
Exponential Data Expansion (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

Loading reviews…

Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 2 Nov 2026, 03:13 UTC

Public exploits and detectionGitHub proofs of concept

WeaknessesCWE-400, CWE-776

Technical details

References

Community reviews

Related threats