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GHSA-phwj-rprq-35pp
No affected components available
Summary
Nokogiri’s CRuby native extension could leave a Ruby wrapper pointing to freed memory when replacing the value of an XML attribute. If Ruby code had already accessed an attribute child node, Nokogiri::XML::Attr#value= could free the underlying native child node while the wrapper remained reachable through the document node cache. A later use of the freed child node or a Ruby GC mark could dereference an invalid pointer, causing an invalid read and a possible segfault.
Nokogiri 1.19.4 preserves any already-wrapped attribute child nodes before replacing the attribute value.
JRuby is not affected.
Severity
The Nokogiri maintainers have evaluated this as low severity. Reaching it requires an unusual API-usage pattern that does not arise during normal use. The application must directly access an attribute's child node and then replace that same attribute's value via Attr#value= or #content=. Nokogiri 1.19.4 makes this pattern safe with no change to the public API. Already-wrapped attribute child nodes are preserved before the value is replaced.
Mitigation
Upgrade to Nokogiri 1.19.4 or later.
As a workaround, avoid accessing attribute child nodes directly via Attr#child or similar before mutating the same attribute’s value.
Credit
This issue was responsibly reported by Zheng Yu from depthfirst.com.
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability.
Limited exploitation activity has been observed. Close monitoring and planned remediation are recommended.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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