CVE-2024-41989 is a vulnerability identified in the Django web framework versions 5.0 before 5.0.8 and 4.2 before 4.2.15. The issue lies in the floatformat template filter, which is designed to format floating-point numbers in Django templates. When this filter receives a string representing a number in scientific notation with a very large exponent, it triggers excessive memory consumption. This behavior aligns with CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption), where the system's resources can be overwhelmed by crafted input. The vulnerability can be exploited remotely without authentication or user interaction, as it involves passing specially crafted input to the template rendering engine. The excessive memory usage can lead to denial-of-service conditions, potentially crashing or severely degrading the performance of web applications. No known exploits have been reported in the wild yet, but the vulnerability's characteristics suggest it could be weaponized to disrupt services. The CVSS 3.1 score of 7.5 reflects a high severity due to the network attack vector, low attack complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction, and impact solely on availability. The vulnerability does not affect confidentiality or integrity but poses a significant risk to service availability. No official patch links were provided in the source, but upgrading to Django 5.0.8 or 4.2.15 and later is recommended to remediate the issue.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a substantial risk to the availability of web applications built on affected Django versions. Exploitation can cause denial-of-service by exhausting server memory, leading to application crashes or degraded performance. This can disrupt business operations, especially for organizations relying on Django for critical customer-facing or internal web services. The impact is particularly severe for sectors with stringent uptime requirements such as finance, healthcare, government, and e-commerce. Additionally, the disruption could be leveraged as part of broader attack campaigns, including distraction tactics during more complex intrusions. Since the vulnerability requires no authentication and can be triggered remotely, attackers can exploit it at scale, potentially affecting multiple organizations simultaneously. The absence of known exploits in the wild currently reduces immediate risk but does not eliminate the threat, especially as exploit code may emerge rapidly after public disclosure. European organizations with limited patch management capabilities or legacy Django deployments are at heightened risk.

1. Immediate upgrade to Django versions 5.0.8 or 4.2.15 (or later) where the vulnerability is fixed. 2. Implement strict input validation and sanitization on user-supplied data that may be passed to the floatformat filter, specifically restricting or sanitizing scientific notation inputs with large exponents. 3. Employ web application firewalls (WAFs) with custom rules to detect and block suspicious inputs that exploit this vulnerability. 4. Monitor application logs and resource usage metrics to detect abnormal memory consumption patterns indicative of exploitation attempts. 5. Conduct thorough code reviews and template audits to identify and refactor any usage of floatformat that could be exposed to untrusted input. 6. Establish robust patch management processes to ensure timely application of security updates. 7. Consider rate limiting or throttling requests to template rendering endpoints to reduce the risk of resource exhaustion. 8. Educate development teams about secure template usage and the risks of processing untrusted input in formatting filters.