Rails 1.1.5 Released With Crucial Security Fixes

Posted by Peter Cooper on Aug 09, 2006 10:01 PM

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Rails 1.1.5 has been released today, but there are no new features. It's important, however, as it contains a number of bug fixes and a 'mandatory security patch' which David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Rails, claims is significant:

This is a MANDATORY upgrade for anyone not running on a very recent edge (which isn’t affected by this). If you have a public Rails site, you MUST upgrade to Rails 1.1.5. The security issue is severe and you do not want to be caught unpatched.

Even though details of the security flaws are not officially being given, it wouldn't take a would-be hacker long to run a diff between 1.1.4 and 1.1.5, so if you're running Rails 0.13 through 1.1.4, upgrade as soon as possible. For more information see David's post at the official Rails blog.

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   Don't forget to change your config/environment.rb...

   Aug 9, 2006 2:10 PM by Tom Copeland

   ...if you've set a RAILS_GEM_VERSION version there, that is. And doing a "gem cleanup" will keep things tidy too.

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   What does it take for a cracker to find the critical change ?

   Aug 9, 2006 6:29 PM by anjan bacchu

   hi there, "Even though details of the security flaws are not officially being given, it wouldn't take a would-be hacker long to run a diff between 1.1.4 and 1.1.5, so if you're running Rails 0.13 through 1.1.4, upgrade as soon as possible." you mean, cracker, don't you ? BR, ~A

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   Re: What does it take for a cracker to find the critical change ?

   Aug 9, 2006 7:27 PM by Peter Cooper

   If I were talking as a geek to geeks, yes. As a writer who tends to stick to the standard vernacular and whose audience contains many non-geek types, no, sadly. :)

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   It appears the way the notice was handled left something to be desired

   Aug 10, 2006 7:36 AM by Obie Fernandez

   Ben Griffiths does a good job of deconstructing the official reaction.

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   A fairly comprehensive explanation

   Aug 10, 2006 10:41 PM by Obie Fernandez

   Explanation of the security hole. It's worth noting that a properly secured and configured server should not be affected by this problem. Neither are the hundreds, if not thousands, of "enterprisey" IT apps that live behind a corporate firewall. Notwithstanding, this is a major news event and I am trying to compile a list of comments from people running major Rails deployments to see how they were affected, if at all.

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