Government Rails Site Hit Hours After CVE Patch

5 comments

• comrade1234 2 hours ago
  Do you have to have matlab running on your rails server for this to happen?
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  • bradly 2 hours ago
    Not running, but supported. You can check your app with:

        bin/rails runner '
          require "vips"
          puts "ruby-vips #{Vips::VERSION}  libvips #{Vips.version(0)}.#{Vips.version(1)}.#{Vips.version(2)}"
          begin
            Vips::Operation.new("matload")
            puts "matload PRESENT - this build can reach libmatio"
          rescue Vips::Error
            puts "matload ABSENT - this build cannot reach libmatio"
          end
        '
    

    This is from the Rails official docs for the CVE which, interestingly, they only released as an agent skill. https://github.com/rails/rails-forensics-CVE-2026-66066/blob...
  • fishtoaster 1 hour ago
    I think the answer is no - this would affect any Rails app with default settings that uses ActiveStorage. The "Preconditions" recap at the bottom here has all the appropriate caveats: https://ethiack.com/info-hub/research/kindarails2shell-how-a...
  • rietta 2 hours ago
    I am not sure, but my read on the original disclosure is no. libvips itself has a variant processor for matlab v5 files, which the exploit took advantage of.
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    • kawsper 2 hours ago
      libvips also have a block_untrusted mode where it will block unsafe loaders, .mat seems to be marked as untrusted:

          vips -l
          VipsForeignLoadMat (matload), load mat from file (.mat), priority=0, untrusted, is_a, get_flags, get_flags_filename, header, load

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      • rietta 2 hours ago
        Correct, which is how the ActiveStorage gem was patched. After this, Rails raises a Vips::Error: VipsForeignLoad exception on an attempted variant render of a malicious file. I plan on writing a technical detail post soon with some more code level details and "indicators of compromise" but this one was getting long. This is more for management to understand why wait to patch is a major issue. The discovery to active exploit attempt timeline is the story here.
• dorianmariecom 2 hours ago
  i thought cloudflare would protect against those no?
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  • rietta 2 hours ago
    Cloudflare or a WAF may or may not help. These can often catch and block specific bot traffic, but not every attack payload is delivered naively. It would be part of a defense in depth. Having the underlying vulnerability fixed is critically important. For those on AWS, WAF & Shield is also very useful but at the end of the day these let legitimate traffic through, such as legitimately uploading a file that only in its contents is malformed.
  • ceejayoz 2 hours ago
    Where does it say the site used Cloudflare?
• hobonation 49 minutes ago
  [dead]
• shevy-java 52 minutes ago
  DHH needs to focus on Rails again rather than Omarchy.
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  • tyre 45 minutes ago
    What does DHH have to do with this? Omarchy itself isn’t known for being secure; here is a root escalation from five days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49499854

    The rails developers are incredibly smart and capable. They patched the exploit. The problem is that it’s too easy to reverse engineer based on the patch. They can’t do anything about that.

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    • dmix 5 minutes ago
      Just to nitpick it wasn’t Omarchy exclusively, the exploit affected a bunch of distros using Docker, which is itself known to be insecure. Plus privilege escalations like that on Linux distros were a dime a dozen historically.
• tyre 43 minutes ago
  This post could be 10% as long:

  - There was a bug with a patch

  - We applied it to our clients

  - There were live exploits within eight hours of the patch being released

  - The Rails team had to expedite release of the technical details because POCs obviated the need to embargo