Resource exhaustion in Rack

CVE-2025-61770

Rack is a modular Ruby web server interface. In versions prior to 2.2.19, 3.1.17, and 3.2.2, `Rack::Multipart::Parser` buffers the entire multipart preamble (bytes before the first boundary) in memory without any size limit. A client can send a large preamble followed by a valid boundary, causing significant memory use and potential process termination due to out-of-memory (OOM) conditions. Remote attackers can trigger large transient memory spikes by including a long preamble in multipart/form-data requests. The impact scales with allowed request sizes and concurrency, potentially causing worker crashes or severe slowdown due to garbage collection. Versions 2.2.19, 3.1.17, and 3.2.2 enforce a preamble size limit (e.g., 16 KiB) or discard preamble data entirely. Workarounds include limiting total request body size at the proxy or web server level and monitoring memory and set per-process limits to prevent OOM conditions.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

EPSS: 0.009 (55.1th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

Affected products

  • Rack — versions < 2.2.19, >= 3.1, < 3.1.17, >= 3.2, < 3.2.2

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-61770?
CVE-2025-61770 is a high-severity vulnerability in Rack, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2025-10-07.
How severe is CVE-2025-61770?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2025-61770 known to be exploited?
1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.