Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Critical Gems Takeover Bug Reported in RubyGems Package Manager

The maintainers of the RubyGems package manager have addressed a critical security flaw that could have been abused to remove gems and replace them with rogue versions under specific circumstances.

“Due to a bug in the yank action, it was possible for any RubyGems.org user to remove and replace certain gems even if that user was not authorized to do so,” RubyGems said in a security advisory published on May 6, 2022.

RubyGems, like npm for JavaScript and pip for Python, is a package manager and a gem hosting service for the Ruby programming language, offering a repository of more than 171,500 libraries.

In a nutshell, the flaw in question, tracked as CVE-2022-29176, enabled anyone to pull certain gems and upload different files with the same name, same version number, and different platforms.

For this to happen, however, a gem needed to have one or more dashes in its name, where the word before the dash was the name of an attacker-controlled gem, and which was created within 30 days or had no updates for over 100 days.

“For example, the gem ‘something-provider’ could have been taken over by the owner of the gem ‘something,'” the project owners explained.

The project maintainers said that there is no evidence that the vulnerability has been exploited in the wild, adding it didn’t receive any support emails from gem owners alerting them to the removal of the libraries without authorization.

“An audit of gem changes for the last 18 months did not find any examples of this vulnerability being used in a malicious way,” the maintainers said. “A deeper audit for any possible use of this exploit is ongoing.”

Recommended:  Worried about Apple AirTag? How to Check if you're being tracked

The disclosure comes as NPM addressed several flaws in its platform that could have been weaponized to facilitate account takeover attacks and publish malicious packages.

Chief among them is a supply chain threat called package planting that enables malicious actors to pass off rogue libraries as legitimate simply by assigning them to trusted, popular maintainers without their knowledge.

source

Suggest an edit to this article

Go to Cybersecurity Knowledge Base

Got to the Latest Cybersecurity News

Go to Cybersecurity Academy

Go to Homepage

Stay informed of the latest Cybersecurity trends, threats and developments. Sign up for our Weekly Cybersecurity Newsletter Today.

Remember, CyberSecurity Starts With You!

  • Globally, 30,000 websites are hacked daily.
  • 64% of companies worldwide have experienced at least one form of a cyber attack.
  • There were 20M breached records in March 2021.
  • In 2020, ransomware cases grew by 150%.
  • Email is responsible for around 94% of all malware.
  • Every 39 seconds, there is a new attack somewhere on the web.
  • An average of around 24,000 malicious mobile apps are blocked daily on the internet.
Bookmark
Share the word, let's increase Cybersecurity Awareness as we know it
- Sponsored -

Sponsored Offer

Unleash the Power of the Cloud: Grab $200 Credit for 60 Days on DigitalOcean!

Digital ocean free 200

Discover more infosec

User Avatar
Steven Black (n0tst3)
Hello! I'm Steve, an independent security researcher, and analyst from Scotland, UK. I've had an avid interest in Computers, Technology and Security since my early teens. 20 years on, and, it's a whole lot more complicated... I've assisted Governments, Individuals and Organizations throughout the world. Including; US DOJ, NHS UK, GOV UK. I'll often reblog infosec-related articles that I find interesting. On the RiSec website, You'll also find a variety of write-ups, tutorials and much more!

more infosec reads

Subscribe for weekly updates

explore

more

security