The BigDecimal library in Ruby 1.8.6 before p369 and 1.8.7 before p173 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) via a string argument that represents a large number, as demonstrated by an attempted conversion to the Float data type.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2009-1904 is rated High Exploit Risk (73/100): CVSS Medium severity, with high exploitation likelihood (EPSS 8.38%, 94th percentile). Core evidence: 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). EPSS rose +5.82% over the last day, indicating growing attacker interest. Mandatory action: Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
| EDB-ID | Source | Kind | Published | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ |
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-06-15 | 2.56% | 8.38% | +5.82% |
| 2 | 2026-06-04 | 6.79% | 2.56% | -4.23% |
| 3 | 2026-06-03 | — | 6.79% | — |
Full EPSS history (27 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.0 | 2.0 | MEDIUM |
|
10.0 | 2.9 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
gentoo
|
normal | CVE-2009-1904: 1 GLSA(s) (200906-02), 1 atom(s) (dev-lang/ruby); latest impact normal. | https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2009-1904 |
redhat
|
medium | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2009-1904 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2009-1904 medium priority: Ubuntu including 2 source packages (ruby1.8, ruby1.9), 20 status rows across 10 suites (dapper, hardy, intrepid, jaunty, karmic, lucid, maverick, natty, oneiric, upstream): released 9, not-affected 5, DNE 3, ignored 2, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2009-1904 |