Collected research

Blog - RCE due to ShowExceptions

RCE due to ShowExceptions

Harsh Jaiswal · Harsh Jaiswal · 22 July 2018

A Rails application left Rack ShowExceptions enabled in production, so a carriage return in a filename parameter triggered an exception page that printed the application secret token. With that token an attacker signs an arbitrary session cookie, which Rails deserializes into remote code execution, confirmed here by a curl callback.

Record

Document

RCE due to ShowExceptions

Researcher

Harsh Jaiswal

Published by

Harsh Jaiswal

Date

22 July 2018

Topic

Server

In the archive

• Collected in the 2018 research round

Tags

• rce
• deserialization
• info-leak
• rails
• ruby
• cookie
• attack-chain
• bug-bounty
• owasp-a07-2021
• owasp-a08-2021

This page is the archive's own catalogue record. The research is the work of Harsh Jaiswal, first published at the original source. Preserved copies are kept so the citation survives its host; this one was last captured on 9 August 2026.