Deserialization of Untrusted Data Affecting metasploit-framework package, versions <6.0.33

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Deserialization of Untrusted Data such that by launching the drb_remote_codeexec exploit, a Metasploit Framework user will inadvertently expose Metasploit to the same deserialization issue that is exploited by that module, due to the reliance on the vulnerable Distributed Ruby class functions. Since Metasploit Framework typically runs with elevated privileges, this can lead to a system compromise on the Metasploit workstation.

Note: Metasploit is only vulnerable when the drb_remote_codeexec module is running. In most cases, this cannot happen automatically.

Serialization is a process of converting an object into a sequence of bytes which can be persisted to a disk or database or can be sent through streams. The reverse process of creating object from sequence of bytes is called deserialization. Serialization is commonly used for communication (sharing objects between multiple hosts) and persistence (store the object state in a file or a database). It is an integral part of popular protocols like Remote Method Invocation (RMI), Java Management Extension (JMX), Java Messaging System (JMS), Action Message Format (AMF), Java Server Faces (JSF) ViewState, etc.

Deserialization of untrusted data (CWE-502) is when the application deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid, thus allowing the attacker to control the state or the flow of the execution.

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