CVE-2021-32740 | Regular Expression Denial of Service in Addressable templates

Addressable is an alternative implementation to the URI implementation that is part of Ruby's standard library. An uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability exists after version 2.3.0 through version 2.7.0. Within the URI template implementation in Addressable, a maliciously crafted template may result in uncontrolled resource consumption, leading to denial of service when matched against a URI. In typical usage, templates would not normally be read from untrusted user input, but nonetheless, no previous security advisory for Addressable has cautioned against doing this. Users of the parsing capabilities in Addressable but not the URI template capabilities are unaffected. The vulnerability is patched in version 2.8.0. As a workaround, only create Template objects from trusted sources that have been validated not to produce catastrophic backtracking.

Published: 2021-07-06 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2021-32740 is rated Moderate Risk (61.6/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 2.53%). EPSS rose +1.64% over the last day, indicating growing attacker interest. Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2021-32740

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 2026-05-03 0.89% 2.53% +1.64%
2 2026-01-27 0.50% 0.89% +0.39%
3 2025-11-21 — 0.50% —

Full EPSS history (17 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2021-32740

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]
5.0 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and predictable.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:N)
No confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:N)
No integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:P)
Partial availability impact.
 10.0 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2021-32740

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2021-32740

GHSA-jxhc-q857-3j6g · Severity: high · Ecosystem: rubygems — Regular Expression Denial of Service in Addressable templates

OS Trackers for CVE-2021-32740

vendor priority summary link
alpine high CVE-2021-32740: 1 source package rows (ruby-addressable); 7 state rows across 7 repos (3.17-community, 3.18-community, 3.19-community, 3.20-community, 3.21-community, 3.22-community, edge-community); fixed 7, open 0. https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2021-32740
debian not yet assigned CVE-2021-32740 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (ruby-addressable), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2021-32740
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2021-32740
suse high — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2021-32740/
ubuntu low CVE-2021-32740 low priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (ruby-addressable), 16 status rows across 16 suites (bionic, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 9, needs-triage 3, ignored 2, DNE 1, released 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2021-32740

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2021-32740

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
addressable_project addressable >= 2.3.0, < 2.8.0 cpe:2.3:a:addressable_project:addressable:*:*:*:*:*:ruby:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 33 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:33:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 34 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:34:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2021-32740

cvelogic Threat Intelligence