# Claims About RubyGems Caching and RubyDoc Code Execution

DevFeed: [Claims About RubyGems Caching and RubyDoc Code Execution](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/what-a-time-to-be-alive-39007.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://tenderlovemaking.com/2026/09/11/what-a-time-to-be-alive/>)

Published: 2026-09-12T00:02:11Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Aaron Patterson](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/aaron-patterson.md>)

Topics: [rubygems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rubygems.md>), [Caching](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/caching.md>), [vulnerability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/vulnerability.md>), [Docker](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/docker.md>), [Web Scraping](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web-scraping.md>)

Tags: [caching](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/caching.md>), [docker](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/docker.md>), [rubygems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rubygems.md>), [scraping](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scraping.md>), [vulnerability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/vulnerability.md>)

## AI overview

An opinion post discusses alleged RubyGems activity involving a caching vulnerability and web scraping. It also describes how published gems can cause RubyDoc.info to run YARD-loaded code in a networked Docker container.

## Source excerpt

Today Reuters and the Wall Street Journal both reported about rogue AI agents at OpenAI attacking RubyGems.org. https://www.rubyhack.ai/ has an amazing writeup, and you should read it. I just wanted to make a quick post about it because it's wild. TL;DR: It seems like OpenAI Bots knew about the RubyGems caching vulnerability, tried to take advantage of it, and at the same time ran some weird web scraping code on RubyDoc.info. Back in May, socket.dev reported about a "GemStuffer Campaign" where someone (I guess OpenAI) was uploading tons of junk gems to RubyGems.org. For some reason, the gems would scrape UK government websites, then repackage the data as gems, and attempt to upload them to RubyGems. I honestly didn't think much about this (or even look into it) until Sydney Von Arx and Spencer Kitts (both co-authors on https://www.rubyhack.ai) contacted me asking about RubyGems. I thought the claims they were making were completely outlandish until I actually read the code in these "GemStuffer" gems. After reading the code in these gems, a couple things stood out to me. YARD Documentation First, the gems leverage YARD documentation to execute arbitrary code on host machines. In most of the examples you'll see a .yardopts file that looks like this: --load ./script.rb README.md lib/**/*.rb Here's a link to an example. If you have YARD installed, and you install this gem, then YARD will load and run whatever is in ./script.rb from inside the gem. I think it's pretty common knowledge that C extensions will execute extconf.rb (so you basically have an RCE vector), but I was surprised to find out that a documentation tool would do that too. Nobody is going to install a gem named slnleaker5 though, so why would this matter? Well, any time a Gem is published RubyDoc.info will download the gem and process the YARD documentation. RubyDoc.info will execute the arbitrary code inside a Docker container. The Docker container still has network access though, so these gems could ha