Service interruption via quadratic delimiter regex
Published Mar 23, 2026 · Updated Mar 23, 2026
ReDoS in affected Rails Active Support releases allows remote attackers to interrupt service through crafted long digit strings. NumberToDelimitedConverter passes the integer portion to gsub! with a repeated lookahead expression, causing quadratic work as the digit string grows. Applications must pass attacker-controlled long digit strings to number_to_delimited; sustained requests can occupy application workers without reading or altering data.
Summary
What happened
ReDoS in affected Rails Active Support releases allows remote attackers to interrupt service through crafted long digit strings. NumberToDelimitedConverter passes the integer portion to gsub! with a repeated lookahead expression, causing quadratic work as the digit string grows. Applications must pass attacker-controlled long digit strings to number_to_delimited; sustained requests can occupy application workers without reading or altering data.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-33169
- Published
- Mar 23, 2026
- Updated
- Mar 23, 2026
- Vendor
- Rails
- Product
- Active Support
- Classifications
- CWE-1333, CWE-400, T1499
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Mar 23, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Mar 23, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=< 7.2.3.1
- Affected versionversion=>= 8.0.0.beta1, < 8.0.4.1
- Affected versionversion=>= 8.1.0.beta1, < 8.1.2.1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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