CVE-2021-29509

mediumpriority · track · 31EPSS 0.016 · 76 %ileEURUUS
grimoire priorityP3 · Track
Exploitable?
—
no known exploitation
Likely / severe?
1.60% (76th) EPSS
CVSS 5 · medium
Is it mine?
10 products
Check your exposure
Who says so?
5 sources
cnnvd · enisa_euvd · fstec_bdu · nvd

EPSS · scored 2026-10-27

Puma is a concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby/Rack applications. The fix for CVE-2019-16770 was incomplete. The original fix only protected existing connections that had already been accepted from having their requests starved by greedy persistent-connections saturating all threads in the same process. However, new connections may still be starved by greedy persistent-connections saturating all threads in all processes in the cluster. A `puma` server which received more concurrent `keep-alive` connections than the server had threads in its threadpool would service only a subset of connections, denying service to the unserved connections. This problem has been fixed in `puma` 4.3.8 and 5.3.1. Setting `queue_requests false` also fixes the issue. This is not advised when using `puma` without a reverse proxy, such as `nginx` or `apache`, because you will open yourself to slow client attacks (e.g. slowloris). The fix is very small and a git patch is available for those using unsupported versions of Puma.

01

cvss

Technical severity, 0–10. One row per scoring source.

7.5
010

base score 0–10 · higher = more severe · hover a vector to decode⚠ sources disagree · medium–high · 5–7.5

v2.05mediumAV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:Pprimary · NVD / NIST USexploitability 10 · impact 2.9
v3.17.5highCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:Hprimary · NVD / NIST USexploitability 3.9 · impact 3.6
v3.17.5highAV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:Hsecondary · FSTEC (BDU) RU
v3.17.5highCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:Hsecondary · ENISA EU
v3.17.5highCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:Hsecondary · security-advisories@github.comexploitability 3.9 · impact 3.6
v3.17.5highCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:Hsecondary · OSV
v3.16.9mediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H/E:Usecondary · CVSS-BT (t0sche)
02

weaknesses

The CWE weakness classes this flaw belongs to.

03

affected products (10)

Products and version ranges known to be affected.

04

advisories (1)

Vendor and ecosystem advisories describing this.

  • GHSA-q28m-8xjw-8vr5Puma's Keepalive Connections Causing Denial Of Service2021-05-18ghsa · osvUS

    This vulnerability is related to [CVE-2019-16770](https://github.com/puma/puma/security/advisories/GHSA-7xx3-m584-x994). ### Impact The fix for CVE-2019-16770 was incomplete. The original fix only protected existing connections that had already been accepted from having their requests starved by greedy persistent-connections saturating all threads in the same process. However, new connections may still be starved by greedy persistent-connections saturating all threads in all processes in the cluster. A `puma` server which received more concurrent `keep-alive` connections than the server had threads in its threadpool would service only a subset of connections, denying service to the unserved connections. ### Patches This problem has been fixed in `puma` 4.3.8 and 5.3.1. ### Workarounds Setting `queue_requests false` also fixes the issue. This is not advised when using `puma` without a reverse proxy, such as `nginx` or `apache`, because you will open yourself to slow client attacks (e.g. [slowloris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowloris_(computer_security))). The fix is very small. [A git patch is available here](https://gist.github.com/nateberkopec/4b3ea5676c0d70cbb37c82d54be25837) for those using [unsupported versions](https://github.com/puma/puma/security/policy#supported-versions) of Puma. ### For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: * Open an issue in [Puma](https://github.com/puma/puma). * To report problems with this fix or to report another vulnerability, see [our security policy.](https://github.com/puma/puma/security/policy) ### Acknowledgements Thank you to @MSP-Greg, @wjordan and @evanphx for their review on this issue. Thank you to @ioquatix for providing a modified fork of `wrk` which made debugging this issue much easier.

05

also known as (4)

Other names and identifiers for this entity.

06

sources

Which sources assert this record, and when.

published 2021-05-11modified 2026-06-17
08

references (24)

External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.

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