Regular Expression Denial of Service in websocket-extensions (RubyGem)
Published Jun 2, 2020 · Updated Nov 3, 2026
Original summary
Normalized public record · Updated Nov 3, 2026
Regular Expression Denial of Service in websocket-extensions (RubyGem)
Publisher and source text is retained separately from QFinch interpretation.
QFinch assessment
The ReDoS flaw allows an attacker to exhaust the server's capacity to process incoming requests by sending a WebSocket handshake request containing a header of the following form:
Potential impact
The ReDoS flaw allows an attacker to exhaust the server's capacity to process incoming requests by sending a WebSocket handshake request containing a header of the following form: That is, a header containing an unclosed string parameter value whose content is a repeating two-byte sequence of a backslash and some other character. The parser takes exponential time to reject this header as invalid, and this will block the processing of any other work on the same thread. Thus if you are running a single-threaded server, such a request can render your service completely unavailable.
Evidence: public source recordsAffected products
| Affected package, product or range | Fix status |
|---|---|
| Consult the referenced vendor advisory for affected versions. | Consult source advisory |
Matching a version is only one part of assessing exposure. QFinch has not assessed your environment on this public page.
Remediation
Apply the vendor-supported fixed release or mitigation, then verify the affected component is no longer reachable.
- Confirm the affected product and reachable code path exist in your environment.
- Apply the vendor-supported patch or mitigation from the primary advisory.
- Rescan the exact deployed revision and retain verification evidence.
Evidence coverage
- SSVC priority
- MEDIUM
- Confidence
- Not available
- Aliases
- None reported
Scores appear only when corresponding evidence exists. Missing data is never interpreted as zero risk.
Sources and record history
- Security advisory ↗
- Patch commit ↗
- blog.jcoglan.com ↗
- snyk.io ↗
- [debian-lts-announce] 20200819 [SECURITY] [DLA 2334-1] ruby-websocket-extensions security update ↗
- USN-4502-1 ↗
Record history
Published Jun 2, 2020 · Last refreshed Nov 3, 2026