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GHSA-5hq2-xf89-9jxq

GitHub Security Advisory

Possible Open Redirect Vulnerability in Action Pack

✓ GitHub Reviewed MODERATE Has CVE

Advisory Details

There is a possible Open Redirect Vulnerability in Action Pack.

Versions Affected: >= v6.1.0.rc2
Not affected: < v6.1.0.rc2
Fixed Versions: 6.1.3.2

Impact
------
This is similar to CVE-2021-22881. Specially crafted Host headers in combination with certain "allowed host" formats can cause the Host Authorization middleware in Action Pack to redirect users to a malicious
website.

Since rails/rails@9bc7ea5, strings in config.hosts that do not have a leading dot are converted to regular expressions without proper escaping. This causes, for example, config.hosts << "sub.example.com" to permit a request with a Host header value of sub-example.com.

Releases
--------
The fixed releases are available at the normal locations.

Workarounds
-----------
The following monkey patch put in an initializer can be used as a workaround.

```ruby
class ActionDispatch::HostAuthorization::Permissions
def sanitize_string(host)
if host.start_with?(".")
/\A(.+\.)?#{Regexp.escape(host[1..-1])}\z/i
else
/\A#{Regexp.escape host}\z/i
end
end
end
```

Patches
-------
To aid users who aren't able to upgrade immediately we have provided patches for the two supported release series. They are in git-am format and consist of a single changeset.

* 6-1-open-redirect.patch - Patch for 6.1 series

Please note that only the 6.1.Z, 6.0.Z, and 5.2.Z series are supported at present. Users of earlier unsupported releases are advised to upgrade as soon as possible as we cannot guarantee the continued availability of security fixes for unsupported releases.

Credits
-------

Thanks Jonathan Hefner (https://hackerone.com/jonathanhefner) for reporting this bug!

Affected Packages

RubyGems actionpack
Affected versions: 6.1.0.rc2 (fixed in 6.1.3.2)

Related CVEs

Key Information

GHSA ID
GHSA-5hq2-xf89-9jxq
Published
May 5, 2021 7:48 PM
Last Modified
August 8, 2023 3:56 PM
CVSS Score
5.0 /10
Primary Ecosystem
RubyGems
Primary Package
actionpack
GitHub Reviewed
✓ Yes

Dataset

Last updated: August 1, 2025 6:44 AM

Data from GitHub Advisory Database. This information is provided for research and educational purposes.