CVE-2026-34230

Rack: Quadratic complexity in Rack::Utils.select_best_encoding via wildcard Accept-Encoding header

State
Published
Severity
5.3 Medium
Published
Apr 2, 2026
Updated
Apr 3, 2026
Reserved
Mar 26, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

Rack is a modular Ruby web server interface. Prior to versions 2.2.23, 3.1.21, and 3.2.6, Rack::Utils.select_best_encoding processes Accept-Encoding values with quadratic time complexity when the header contains many wildcard (*) entries. Because this method is used by Rack::Deflater to choose a response encoding, an unauthenticated attacker can send a single request with a crafted Accept-Encoding header and cause disproportionate CPU consumption on the compression middleware path. This results in a denial of service condition for applications using Rack::Deflater. This issue has been patched in versions 2.2.23, 3.1.21, and 3.2.6.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.3 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:LGitHub_M

Weaknesses

  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

Affected Products

ProductVersions
rackrack
  • < 2.2.23Affected
  • >= 3.0.0.beta1, < 3.1.21Affected
  • >= 3.2.0, < 3.2.6Affected

References

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