Ruby Snippet #05

The Code Review Snippet challenges present a small snippet of Ruby-on-Rails code designed to test your ability to identify security issues. Initially, you are encouraged to examine the code on your own. If you struggle to find the vulnerability or want to understand it better, a detailed video is available to guide you through the process.

In this specific challenge, the code introduces a route parameter motd which is used to open and read a file. The video explains that this implementation has security issues, such as lack of input filtering and the use of open, which is an alias to kernel.open that could allow command execution. The correct approach involves using file.open and implementing filtering mechanisms to prevent directory traversal and arbitrary file access.