CVE-2023-40703VulnerabilityPublished 27 Nov 2023Updated 3 Jun 2025

CVE-2023-40703: Mattermost · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects MattermostSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.3 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 06:26 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.3Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 53% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: Low

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the impacted component are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 27 Nov 2023
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 2026-10-26.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Mattermost Mattermost	Affected =0	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate this vulnerability, European organizations should implement the following specific measures: 1) Apply patches or updates from Mattermost as soon as they become available, prioritizing versions that address this vulnerability. 2) Implement strict input validation and sanitization at the application layer, particularly limiting the length and character set of inputs in the Boards fields to prevent oversized or malformed data submissions. 3) Enforce the principle of least privilege by restricting user permissions, ensuring that only trusted users have the ability to modify Boards content. 4) Monitor application logs and resource usage metrics for unusual spikes that could indicate exploitation attempts, enabling early detection of potential DoS conditions. 5) Consider deploying Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) with custom rules to detect and block anomalous requests targeting the Boards feature. 6) Educate users about secure usage practices and the risks of sharing credentials to reduce the risk of account compromise. 7) In environments where Mattermost is critical, implement redundancy and failover mechanisms to maintain availability in case of service disruption. These steps go beyond generic advice by focusing on proactive input controls, privilege management, and monitoring tailored to the specific vulnerability context.

Description

Mattermost fails to properly limit the characters allowed in different fields of a block in Mattermost Boards allowing a attacker to consume excessive resources, possibly leading to Denial of Service, by patching the field of a block using a specially crafted string.

Impact

For European organizations using Mattermost, particularly those leveraging the Boards feature for project management and collaboration, this vulnerability poses a risk of service disruption. A successful exploitation could lead to Denial of Service, impacting team productivity and communication. This is especially critical for organizations relying on Mattermost for real-time collaboration in sectors such as finance, healthcare, government, and critical infrastructure, where availability is paramount. The medium severity rating indicates that while the vulnerability is not trivial, it requires some level of privilege, which somewhat limits the attack surface. However, insider threats or compromised accounts could exploit this to degrade service availability. Additionally, organizations with strict uptime requirements or those operating in regulated environments may face compliance and operational risks if the service becomes unavailable. The absence of known exploits reduces immediate risk but does not eliminate the threat, as attackers could develop exploits once the vulnerability details are widely known.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

mattermost.com/security-updates (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 4 Jul 2025, 16:54 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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