CVE-2016-2338

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 4.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2022-09-29 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-787

Description

An exploitable heap overflow vulnerability exists in the Psych::Emitter start_document function of Ruby. In Psych::Emitter start_document function heap buffer "head" allocation is made based on tags array length. Specially constructed object passed as element of tags array can increase this array size after mentioned allocation and cause heap overflow.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 8.0
Ruby: 2.2.2, 2.3.0

References

http://www.talosintelligence.com/reports/TALOS-2016-0032/
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/03/msg00032.html
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20221228-0005/
http://www.talosintelligence.com/reports/TALOS-2016-0032/
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/03/msg00032.html
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20221228-0005/

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