CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2017-16355 — Phusion Passenger security vulnerability
In agent/Core/SpawningKit/Spawner.h in Phusion Passenger 5.1.10 (fixed in Passenger Open Source 5.1.11 and Passenger Enterprise 5.1.10), if Passenger is running as root, it is possible to list the contents of arbitrary files on a system by symlinking a file named REVISION from the application root folder to a file of choice and querying passenger-status --show=xml.
- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 4.7 (3.1)
- Published
- 2017-12-14
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-200
Affected products
- phusion / passenger
- debian / debian_linux / 9.0
Showing 2 representative product identities from 3 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.
Matched remediation archetype
Information disclosure and sensitive data exposure
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Trace sensitive data through responses, errors, logs, metrics, traces, caches, exports, files, backups, and client bundles.
- Identify affected subjects, tenants, retention windows, access controls, and downstream copies without opening unnecessary sensitive records.
- Review metadata, timing, status, length, and existence signals as well as direct content disclosure.
Remediate safely
- Minimize collection and output, apply field-level authorization and redaction at a centralized boundary, and return generic external errors.
- Remove secrets and sensitive data from logs, artifacts, URLs, caches, and client-side bundles; rotate credentials that may have been exposed.
- Update the affected component and add synthetic-data tests for response, error, observability, and export paths.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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