What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-21305: Code Injection vulnerability in CarrierWave

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 12.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2021-02-08 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-74

Description

CarrierWave is an open-source RubyGem which provides a simple and flexible way to upload files from Ruby applications. In CarrierWave before versions 1.3.2 and 2.1.1, there is a code injection vulnerability. The "#manipulate!" method inappropriately evals the content of mutation option(:read/:write), allowing attackers to craft a string that can be executed as a Ruby code. If an application developer supplies untrusted inputs to the option, it will lead to remote code execution(RCE). This is fixed in versions 1.3.2 and 2.1.1.

Affected products

• carrierwaveuploader carrierwave: before 1.3.2; from 2.0.1 before 2.1.1 — fixed in 1.3.2, 2.1.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: carrierwaveuploader carrierwave 1.3.2, 2.1.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#132---2021-02-08
• https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#211---2021-02-08
• https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/commit/387116f5c72efa42bc3938d946b4c8d2f22181b7
• https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/security/advisories/GHSA-cf3w-g86h-35x4
• https://rubygems.org/gems/carrierwave
• https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#132---2021-02-08
• https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#211---2021-02-08
• https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/commit/387116f5c72efa42bc3938d946b4c8d2f22181b7
• https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/security/advisories/GHSA-cf3w-g86h-35x4
• https://rubygems.org/gems/carrierwave

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