GHSA-q28m-8xjw-8vr5

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    GHSA-q28m-8xjw-8vr5

    Published: 18 May 2021Last Modified: 8 Jul 2026

    Summary: Puma's Keepalive Connections Causing Denial Of Service

    Details: This vulnerability is related to [CVE-2019-16770](https://github.com/puma/puma/security/advisories/GHSA-7xx3-m584-x994). ### Impact The fix for CVE-2019-16770 was incomplete. The original fix only protected existing connections that had already been accepted from having their requests starved by greedy persistent-connections saturating all threads in the same process. However, new connections may still be starved by greedy persistent-connections saturating all threads in all processes in the cluster. A `puma` server which received more concurrent `keep-alive` connections than the server had threads in its threadpool would service only a subset of connections, denying service to the unserved connections. ### Patches This problem has been fixed in `puma` 4.3.8 and 5.3.1. ### Workarounds Setting `queue_requests false` also fixes the issue. This is not advised when using `puma` without a reverse proxy, such as `nginx` or `apache`, because you will open yourself to slow client attacks (e.g. [slowloris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowloris_(computer_security))). The fix is very small. [A git patch is available here](https://gist.github.com/nateberkopec/4b3ea5676c0d70cbb37c82d54be25837) for those using [unsupported versions](https://github.com/puma/puma/security/policy#supported-versions) of Puma. ### For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: * Open an issue in [Puma](https://github.com/puma/puma). * To report problems with this fix or to report another vulnerability, see [our security policy.](https://github.com/puma/puma/security/policy) ### Acknowledgements Thank you to @MSP-Greg, @wjordan and @evanphx for their review on this issue. Thank you to @ioquatix for providing a modified fork of `wrk` which made debugging this issue much easier.

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: puma

    Purl: pkg:gem/puma

    Affected ranges

    Type: ECOSYSTEM

    Events:

    Introduced- 0
    Fixed -4.3.8

    Affected versions

    0.8.0
    0.8.1
    0.8.2

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High
    GHSA-q28m-8xjw-8vr5 | CVE-DB