It was discovered that the REXML parser, part of the interpreter for the Ruby language, could be coerced into allocating large string objects that could consume all available memory on the system. This could allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash).

For the stable distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 1.8.7.358-7.1+deb7u2. For the upcoming stable distribution (jessie), this problem has been fixed in version 2.1.5-1 of the ruby2.1 source package. For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem has been fixed in version 2.1.5-1 of the ruby2.1 source package. We recommend that you upgrade your ruby1.8 packages.

Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (as in perl). It is simple, straight-forward, and extensible.

ruby1.8 on Debian Linux

This check tests the installed software version using the apt package manager.

• http://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3159.html

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Updated on 2015-03-25