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MEDIUM5.3

GHSA-x8cg-fq8g-mxfx

Rack's multipart byte range processing allows denial of service via excessive overlapping ranges

Quick fix

GHSA-x8cg-fq8g-mxfx — rack: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.

bundle update rack

Details

## Summary

`Rack::Utils.get_byte_ranges` parses the HTTP `Range` header without limiting the number of individual byte ranges. Although the existing fix for CVE-2024-26141 rejects ranges whose total byte coverage exceeds the file size, it does not restrict the count of ranges. An attacker can supply many small overlapping ranges such as `0-0,0-0,0-0,...` to trigger disproportionate CPU, memory, I/O, and bandwidth consumption per request.

This results in a denial of service condition in Rack file-serving paths that process multipart byte range responses.

## Details

`Rack::Utils.get_byte_ranges` accepts a comma-separated list of byte ranges and validates them based on their aggregate size, but does not impose a limit on how many individual ranges may be supplied.

As a result, a request such as:

```http Range: bytes=0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,... ```

can contain thousands of overlapping one-byte ranges while still satisfying the total-size check added for CVE-2024-26141.

When such a header is processed by Rack’s file-serving code, each range causes additional work, including multipart response generation, per-range iteration, file seek and read operations, and temporary string allocation for response size calculation and output. This allows a relatively small request header to trigger disproportionately expensive processing and a much larger multipart response.

The issue is distinct from CVE-2024-26141. That fix prevents range sets whose total byte coverage exceeds the file size, but does not prevent a large number of overlapping ranges whose summed size remains within that limit.

## Impact

Applications that expose file-serving paths with byte range support may be vulnerable to denial of service.

An unauthenticated attacker can send crafted `Range` headers containing many small overlapping ranges to consume excessive CPU time, memory, file I/O, and bandwidth. Repeated requests may reduce application availability and increase pressure on workers and garbage collection.

## Mitigation

* Update to a patched version of Rack that limits the number of accepted byte ranges. * Reject or normalize multipart byte range requests containing excessive range counts. * Consider disabling multipart range support where it is not required. * Apply request filtering or header restrictions at the reverse proxy or application boundary to limit abusive `Range` headers.

Are you affected?

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Affected packages

RubyGems/rack
Introduced in: 0Fixed in: 2.2.23
Fixbundle update rack
RubyGems/rack
Introduced in: 3.0.0.beta1Fixed in: 3.1.21
Fixbundle update rack
RubyGems/rack
Introduced in: 3.2.0Fixed in: 3.2.6
Fixbundle update rack

References