Rails Active Support has a possible DoS vulnerability in its number helpers
Published: March 23, 2026
SECURITY IDENTIFIERS
- CVE: CVE-2026-33176 (NVD)
- GHSA: GHSA-2j26-frm8-cmj9
- Vendor Advisory: https://github.com/rails/rails/security/advisories/GHSA-2j26-frm8-cmj9
GEM
FRAMEWORK
PATCHED VERSIONS
~> 7.2.3, >= 7.2.3.1
~> 8.0.4, >= 8.0.4.1
>= 8.1.2.1
DESCRIPTION
Impact
Active Support number helpers accept strings containing scientific notation (e.g. 1e10000),
which when converted to a string could be expanded into extremely large decimal representations.
This can cause excessive memory allocation and CPU consumption when the expanded number is formatted,
possibly resulting in a DoS vulnerability.
Releases
The fixed releases are available at the normal locations.
RELATED
- https://github.com/rails/rails/security/advisories/GHSA-2j26-frm8-cmj9
- https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/19dbab51ca086a657bb86458042bc44314916bcb
- https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/ebd6be18120d1136511eb516338e27af25ac0a1a
- https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/ee2c59e730e5b8faed502cd2c573109df093f856
- https://github.com/rails/rails/releases/tag/v7.2.3.1
- https://github.com/rails/rails/releases/tag/v8.0.4.1
- https://github.com/rails/rails/releases/tag/v8.1.2.1
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-2j26-frm8-cmj9