CVE-2024-10549 is a vulnerability classified under CWE-1333 (Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity) found in the h2oai/h2o-3 product, version 3.46.0.1. The issue resides in the /3/Parse API endpoint, which accepts two user-supplied strings: one used to construct a regular expression and another to which this regex is applied. The construction and application of these regex patterns lack safeguards against complexity or catastrophic backtracking, leading to excessive CPU consumption when processing crafted inputs. An attacker can exploit this by sending multiple concurrent requests with malicious regex patterns, causing thread exhaustion on the server and resulting in a denial of service (DoS). The vulnerability requires no authentication or user interaction and can be triggered remotely over the network. The CVSS v3.0 base score of 7.5 reflects a high severity due to the ease of exploitation and the complete impact on availability, although confidentiality and integrity remain unaffected. No patches or fixes are currently linked, and no known exploits have been reported in the wild. This vulnerability poses a significant risk to environments relying on h2oai/h2o-3 for AI and data processing workloads, where service availability is critical.

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2024-10549 is the potential for denial of service attacks that can disrupt critical AI and data analytics services powered by h2oai/h2o-3. Such disruptions could lead to operational downtime, loss of productivity, and potential financial losses, especially in sectors like finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and research where AI-driven insights are integral. The vulnerability does not compromise data confidentiality or integrity but severely affects availability, which can cascade into broader business continuity issues. Given the increasing reliance on AI platforms in Europe, unmitigated exploitation could also damage organizational reputation and trust. Additionally, the lack of authentication requirements means that attackers can launch these attacks from external networks, increasing the threat surface. Organizations with multi-tenant or cloud deployments may face amplified risks due to shared resource exhaustion.

To mitigate CVE-2024-10549, European organizations should implement several targeted measures beyond generic advice: 1) Apply strict input validation and sanitization on all user-supplied strings used in regex construction to prevent overly complex or malicious patterns. 2) Introduce regex complexity limits or timeouts to abort processing of regex operations that exceed safe thresholds, thereby preventing catastrophic backtracking. 3) Implement rate limiting and connection throttling on the /3/Parse endpoint to reduce the risk of thread exhaustion from simultaneous requests. 4) Monitor server thread usage and set up alerts for abnormal spikes indicative of potential DoS attempts. 5) Isolate the vulnerable endpoint behind a web application firewall (WAF) with custom rules to detect and block suspicious regex patterns or excessive request rates. 6) Engage with the vendor or community to obtain patches or updates as soon as they become available and prioritize their deployment. 7) Consider deploying the service in containerized or sandboxed environments to limit the impact of resource exhaustion. 8) Conduct regular security assessments and fuzz testing focused on regex inputs to proactively identify and remediate similar issues.