Developers are being urged to update their Ruby on Rails software following the discovery of a potentially serious security vulnerability. Ruby on Rails is a popular open source framework for developing database-backed web applications. Users are urged to update to version 1.1.6 of the software after checking that this upgrade is compatible with other software they may have installed.

Earlier versions of the software are vulnerable to a bug in the routing code of the software which exposes the development environment to possible exploitation. An earlier fix for the problem, contained in a 1.1.5 release, only partly closed the hole, necessitating the release of a further update. A posting on the Ruby on Rails weblog explains the seriousness of the bug, which "means that you can essentially take down a Rails process by starting something like /script/profiler, as the code will run for a long time and that process will be hung while it happens. Other URLs can even cause data loss."

The posting provides links to software downloads along with a warning the the upgrade might break applications using third party engines. Developers are urged to apply URL blocking as a workaround until compatibility issues with other software in their environment are ironed out. ®

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