CVE-2024-12391VulnerabilityPublished 20 Mar 2025Updated 15 Oct 2025

CVE-2024-12391: binary-husky/gpt_academic · ReDoS

Affects binary-husky/gpt_academicSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 06:15 UTC

CVSS 3.0 base score

6.5Medium

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

EPSS: 0.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 60% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

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

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: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 20 Mar 2025
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 2026-10-25.

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

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2024-12391, organizations should implement several specific measures beyond generic advice: 1) Restrict the ability to supply arbitrary regular expressions to trusted users only, enforcing strict access controls on interfaces that accept regex input. 2) Sanitize and validate all user-supplied regular expressions to detect and reject patterns known to cause exponential backtracking or excessive complexity. 3) Employ regex execution timeouts or resource limits within the Python environment to prevent long-running regex operations from hanging the server. 4) Monitor CPU and memory usage of processes running regex operations to detect anomalous spikes indicative of ReDoS attempts. 5) Where possible, replace vulnerable regex patterns with safer alternatives or use regex libraries that provide guaranteed linear-time matching. 6) Keep the binary-husky/gpt_academic software up to date and apply patches promptly once available. 7) Consider isolating regex processing in sandboxed environments or separate worker processes to contain potential DoS impacts. 8) Conduct regular security reviews of code that accepts or processes regex input to identify and remediate similar risks proactively.

Description

A vulnerability in binary-husky/gpt_academic, as of commit 310122f, allows for a Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) attack. The function '解析项目源码（手动指定和筛选源码文件类型）' permits the execution of user-provided regular expressions. Certain regular expressions can cause the Python RE engine to take exponential time to execute, leading to a Denial of Service (DoS) condition. An attacker who controls both the regular expression and the search string can exploit this vulnerability to hang the server for an arbitrary amount of time.

Impact

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2024-12391 is the potential for denial of service attacks that can disrupt critical development and code analysis workflows. Organizations using binary-husky/gpt_academic in CI/CD pipelines, automated source code analysis, or developer tooling could experience service outages or degraded performance, impacting productivity and potentially delaying software delivery. Public-facing services or multi-tenant environments are particularly at risk, as attackers could exploit the vulnerability remotely to cause server hangs without needing user interaction. While confidentiality and integrity are not directly affected, the availability impact can lead to operational disruptions and increased incident response costs. In sectors with strict uptime requirements, such as finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, such disruptions could have cascading effects. Additionally, the inability to process source code efficiently could hinder vulnerability detection and remediation efforts, indirectly increasing security risks. The absence of known exploits reduces immediate risk but does not eliminate the threat, especially as attackers often weaponize such vulnerabilities once disclosed.

CWE-1333Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product uses a regular expression with a worst-case computational complexity that is inefficient and possibly exponential.
Architecture and Design
Use regular expressions that do not support backtracking, e.g. by removing nested quantifiers.
System Configuration
Set backtracking limits in the configuration of the regular expression implementation, such as PHP's pcre.backtrack_limit. Also consider limits on execution time for the process.
Implementation
Do not use regular expressions with untrusted input. If regular expressions must be used, avoid using backtracking in the expression.
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
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

huntr.com/bounties/70b3f4f0-6b1b-4563-a18c-fe46502e6ba0 (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 15 Oct 2025, 13:23 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-1333

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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