# \[Ruby 1.8 - Bug #199\] (Open) Possible patches for critical segfaults and vulnerabilities available f

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-8-bug-199-open-possible-patches-for-critical-segfaults-and-vulnerabilities-available-f/141368>\
**Category:** Development\
**Created:** [June 25, 2008, 3:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-8-bug-199-open-possible-patches-for-critical-segfaults-and-vulnerabilities-available-f/141368 "2008-06-25T03:05:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anonymous)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 3:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-8-bug-199-open-possible-patches-for-critical-segfaults-and-vulnerabilities-available-f/141368/1 "2008-06-25T03:05:33Z")

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e$B%A%1%C%He(B #199 e$B$,Js9p$5$l$^$7$?!#e(B (by Anonymous)

* * *

Bug #199: Possible patches for critical segfaults and vulnerabilities  
available for review in ruby-talk  
[http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199)

e$B5/I\<\<Te(B: Anonymous  
e$B%9%F!\<%?%9e(B: Open  
e$BM%@hEYe(B: Immediate  
e$BC4Ev\<Te(B:  
e$B%+%F%4%je(B:  
Target version:

All currently available official versions of MRI Ruby are either  
vulnerable, failing with segmentation faults, or change the API in ways  
that make it impossible to run critical Ruby libraries such as Rails 2.0  
and RSpec.

There are currently two unofficial patches submitted by ruby-talk  
members that seem to fix these problems:

- [Ruby 1.9.0/1.8.7/1.8.6/1.8.5 new releases (Security Fix) - Ruby - Ruby-Forum](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/157034#693292)
- [Ruby 1.9.0/1.8.7/1.8.6/1.8.5 new releases (Security Fix) - Ruby - Ruby-Forum](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/157034#693303)

One is a backport of fixes to 1.8.6p111 by Stanislav S. and Hongli  
Lai. The other is a fix to 1.8.6p230 by Smartleaf which reverts a recent  
patch that’s causing segmentation faults. I’ve attached these files to  
this ticket.

I’ve personally confirmed that both of these work as well as the stock  
1.8.6p111 in running the Rails 2.0, RSpec 1.1.4, and RubySpec test  
suites. However, I do not understand the C patches well enough to be  
able to help with them myself.

Can one of the Ruby maintainers please review these patches and join in  
the discussion at ruby-talk or the online thread at  
[Ruby 1.9.0/1.8.7/1.8.6/1.8.5 new releases (Security Fix) - Ruby - Ruby-Forum](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/157034) ?

Thank you!

-igal

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anonymous)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2008, 7:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-8-bug-199-open-possible-patches-for-critical-segfaults-and-vulnerabilities-available-f/141368/2 "2008-06-26T07:35:59Z")

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e$B%A%1%C%He(B #199 e$B$,99?7$5$l$^$7$?!#e(B (by Anonymous)

I’d really like to hear from the core team about this issue as well. We  
have thousands of ruby1.8.6p114 installs that we cannot update to the  
official releases since they all segfault. For now we are using the  
[http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/attachments/download/11](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/attachments/download/11) patch against p114  
and it seems to work fine for all intents and purposes. But it would  
really re-assure us if the ruby-core could respond and bless one of  
these patches or tell us what is wrong with them if there are issues.

## Thanks -Ezra Z.

[http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199)

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**Author:** ![anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anonymous)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2008, 2:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-8-bug-199-open-possible-patches-for-critical-segfaults-and-vulnerabilities-available-f/141368/3 "2008-06-28T14:28:01Z")

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e$B%A%1%C%He(B #199 e$B$,99?7$5$l$^$7$?!#e(B (by Igal K.)

e$B%U%!%$%ke(B wrapper.sh e$BDI2Ce(B  
e$B%U%!%$%ke(B logs.tar.gz e$BDI2Ce(B

Urabe S. wrote:

> Sorry for a late reply but I think I’ve fixed this issue. Can someone  
> please try the latest ruby\_1\_8\_6 branch?  
> I’m delighted to hear from you!

I’ve checked out the latest source code and ran the test suites of  
RubySpec, Rails and RSpec on it. The segfaults are gone and I’m able to  
run Rails applications again. However, many tests are failing in a way  
that indicates there are either bugs or changes in the API which cause  
p238 to behave differently than p111.

I’ve updated the RedMine ticket  
[[http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199)] and uploaded the  
following files:

1. wrapper.sh – Sample commands I’m running to build Ruby and execute  
the test suites
2. logs.tar.gz – The test suite logs for the various programs

In the logs, the “p111.log” files were created with Ubuntu 8.04’s  
patched Ruby 1.8.6p111, while the “17630.log” files were created with  
SVN r17630. The best way to work with these log files is to use a modern  
diff program like “gvimdiff” or “meld” which can detect intra-line  
changes (a few characters changed within a line), and visually compare  
them side-by-side. Note that a number of tests fail on both, this is  
unfortunately normal. What’s important is that the same tests pass and  
fail on both versions. I’ll try to make sense of the changes and errors  
after I get some sleep.

Because the lastest SVN version seems to introduce API changes, trying  
to fix it may be time consuming and stressful.

I urge you to consider reviewing the submitted unofficial patches and  
make a new release based on a well-known stable version of the code,  
such as p111 or p114.

Thank you!

## -igal

[http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anonymous)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 8:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-8-bug-199-open-possible-patches-for-critical-segfaults-and-vulnerabilities-available-f/141368/4 "2008-07-02T20:31:36Z")

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e$B%A%1%C%He(B #199 e$B$,99?7$5$l$^$7$?!#e(B (by Igal K.)

e$B%U%!%$%ke(B logs2.tar.gz e$BDI2Ce(B

I’ve re-run the test suites, along with some additional ones, against  
Ruby 1.8.6 SVN 17631 and the results seem promising.

The RubySpec team’s been working hard to revise their specs and  
eliminated the false positives I reported last time. Many thanks to  
Federico B., Vladimir S., Arthur Schreiber, Tanaka A., and  
others for the timely effort.

Here are the test suites and their results:

RubySpec [Wed Jul 2 11:27:11 2008 -0500]

- Module#remove\_method fails
- String#% failures
- Iconv has many, many failures

Rails 1.2.6

- Fine!

Rails 2.0.2

- Fine!

Rails 2.1.0

- Fine!

Rails tip

- Hundreds of tests seem to be skipped, haven’t figured out why.

RSpec 1.1.4

- Fine. Although it fails the ‘identical HTML’ spec, that spec is flaky  
and shouldn’t count.

## -igal

[http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@anonymous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anonymous)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 7:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-8-bug-199-open-possible-patches-for-critical-segfaults-and-vulnerabilities-available-f/141368/5 "2008-07-09T07:06:43Z")

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e$B%A%1%C%He(B #199 e$B$,99?7$5$l$^$7$?!#e(B (by Nobuyoshi N.)

e$B%9%F!\<%?%9e(B Opene$B$+$ie(BClosede$B$KJQ99e(B  
e$B?JD=e(B % 0e$B$+$ie(B100e$B$KJQ99e(B

## Merged to 1.8.6 branch in the repository, at r17630.

[http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/199)