Rails before 1.2.4, as used for Ruby on Rails, allows remote attackers and ActiveResource servers to determine the existence of arbitrary files and read arbitrary XML files via the Hash.from_xml (Hash#from_xml) method, which uses XmlSimple (XML::Simple) unsafely, as demonstrated by reading passwords from the Pidgin (Gaim) .purple/accounts.xml file.

References

• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2007-5379
• GHSA-fjfg-q662-gm6j
• http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195315
• http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/8453
• http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307179
• http://lists.apple.com/archives/security-announce/2007/Dec/msg00002.html
• http://osvdb.org/40717
• http://secunia.com/advisories/27657
• http://secunia.com/advisories/28136
• http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200711-17.xml
• http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2007/10/5/rails-1-2-4-maintenance-release
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/26096
• http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA07-352A.html
• http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2007/3508
• http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2007/4238
• https://github.com/rubysec/ruby-advisory-db/blob/master/gems/rails/CVE-2007-5379.yml