Answer in brief
CVE-2023-28846 records a Medium severity (CVSS 5.9) vulnerability in unpoly-rails Denial of Service vulnerability. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps unpoly-rails (rubygems). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
Analysis pending evidence review
HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.
CVSS is 5.9. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.
Analysis status
Analysis pending evidence review
Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.
The current feed maps unpoly-rails (rubygems). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| unpoly-railsrubygems | >=0 <2.7.2.2 | 2.7.2.2 |
Published upstream
Mar 30, 2023
Evidence: source:osv:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Sep 10, 2026
Evidence: source:osv:source_dates:source-dates:recordFirst seen by HOL
Sep 10, 2026
There is a possible Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability in the unpoly-rails gem that implements the [Unpoly server protocol](https://unpoly.com/up.protocol) for Rails applications. ### Impact This issues affects Rails applications that operate as an upstream of a load balancer's that uses [passive health checks](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/admin-guide/load-balancer/http-health-check/#passive-health-checks). The [unpoly-rails](https://github.com/unpoly/unpoly-rails/) gem echoes the request URL as an `X-Up-Location` response header. By making a request with exceedingly long URLs (paths or query string), an attacker can cause unpoly-rails to write a exceedingly large response header. If the response header is too large to be parsed by a load balancer downstream of the Rails application, it may cause the load balancer to remove the upstream from a load balancing group. This causes that application instance to become unavailable until a configured timeout is reached or until an active healthcheck succeeds. ### Patches The fixed release 2.7.2.2+ is available via RubyGems and GitHub. ### Workarounds If you cannot upgrade to a fixed release, several workarounds are available: - Configure your load balancer to use active health checks, e.g. by periodically requesting a route with a known response that indicates healthiness. - Configure your load balancer so the [maximum size of response headers](https://makandracards.com/operations/537537-nginx-proxy-buffer-tuning) is at least twice the [maximum size of a URL](https://tryhexadecimal.com/guides/http/414-request-uri-too-long). - Instead of changing your server configuration you may also configure your Rails application to delete redundant `X-Up-Location` headers set by unpoly-rails: ```ruby class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base after_action :remove_redundant_up_location_header private def remove_redundant_up_location_header if request.original_url == response.headers['X-Up-Location'] response.headers.delete('X-Up-Location') end end end ```
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.