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CVE-2019-16782 Moderate

Possible Information Leak / Session Hijack Vulnerability in Rack

There's a possible information leak / session hijack vulnerability in Rack. Attackers may be able to find and hijack sessions by using timing attacks targeting the session id. Session ids are usually stored and indexed in a database that uses some kind of scheme for speeding up lookups of that session id. By carefully measuring the amount of time it takes to look up a session, an attacker may be able to find a valid session id and hijack the session. The session id itself may be generated randomly, but the way the session is indexed by the backing store does not use a secure comparison. ### Impact The session id stored in a cookie is the same id that is used when querying the backing session storage engine. Most storage mechanisms (for example a database) use some sort of indexing in order to speed up the lookup of that id. By carefully timing requests and session lookup failures, an attacker may be able to perform a timing attack to determine an existing session id and hijack that session. ## Releases The 1.6.12 and 2.0.8 releases are available at the normal locations. ### Workarounds There are no known workarounds. ### 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. * 1-6-session-timing-attack.patch - Patch for 1.6 series * 2-0-session-timing-attack.patch - Patch for 2.6 series ### Credits Thanks Will Leinweber for reporting this!

Exploit probability 3.7%
Published December 18, 2019
Required by Not available
Last source change March 13, 2026

02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE

Affected packages

Unknown Unknown

31 explicit affected versions

RubyGems rack

75 explicit affected versions

03 / CONNECTIONS

Connected vulnerabilities

04 / EVIDENCE

Source records

Open Source Vulnerabilities CVE-2019-16782

There's a possible information leak / session hijack vulnerability in Rack (RubyGem rack). This vulnerability is patched in versions 1.6.12 and 2.0.8. Attackers may be able to find and hijack sessions by using timing attacks targeting the session id. Session ids are usually stored and indexed in a database that uses some kind of scheme for speeding up lookups of that session id. By carefully measuring the amount of time it takes to look up a session, an attacker may be able to find a valid session id and hijack the session. The session id itself may be generated randomly, but the way the session is indexed by the backing store does not use a secure comparison.

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Open Source Vulnerabilities GHSA-hrqr-hxpp-chr3

There's a possible information leak / session hijack vulnerability in Rack. Attackers may be able to find and hijack sessions by using timing attacks targeting the session id. Session ids are usually stored and indexed in a database that uses some kind of scheme for speeding up lookups of that session id. By carefully measuring the amount of time it takes to look up a session, an attacker may be able to find a valid session id and hijack the session. The session id itself may be generated randomly, but the way the session is indexed by the backing store does not use a secure comparison. ### Impact The session id stored in a cookie is the same id that is used when querying the backing session storage engine. Most storage mechanisms (for example a database) use some sort of indexing in order to speed up the lookup of that id. By carefully timing requests and session lookup failures, an attacker may be able to perform a timing attack to determine an existing session id and hijack that session. ## Releases The 1.6.12 and 2.0.8 releases are available at the normal locations. ### Workarounds There are no known workarounds. ### 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. * 1-6-session-timing-attack.patch - Patch for 1.6 series * 2-0-session-timing-attack.patch - Patch for 2.6 series ### Credits Thanks Will Leinweber for reporting this!

View original source

05 / REFERENCES

Further evidence