VulnerabilityPublished 20 Mar 2025Updated 15 Oct 2025

CVE-2024-7779: danswer-ai/danswer · ReDoS

Affects danswer-ai/danswerSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 09:15 UTC

CVSS 3.0 base score

7.5High

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

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
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: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
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 26 Oct 2026.

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
GitHubdanswer-ai/danswer`pkg:github/danswer-ai/danswer`Other threats	Affected =1	Fixed in–

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

1. Monitor for official patches or updates from the danswer-ai project and apply them promptly once available. 2. Until patches are released, implement input validation and sanitization to restrict or reject inputs that could trigger complex regex evaluation, focusing on limiting input length and disallowing suspicious patterns. 3. Review and optimize regular expressions used within the application to reduce backtracking and complexity, potentially replacing vulnerable regex constructs with safer alternatives. 4. Employ Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) or Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) with rules designed to detect and block ReDoS attack patterns targeting regex processing. 5. Limit network exposure of the danswer-ai/danswer service by restricting access to trusted IPs or internal networks only. 6. Monitor application performance metrics and logs for unusual spikes in processing time or resource consumption indicative of ReDoS attempts. 7. Conduct regular security assessments and fuzz testing focused on input handling to identify and remediate similar vulnerabilities proactively.

Description

A vulnerability in danswer-ai/danswer version 1 allows an attacker to perform a Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) by manipulating regular expressions. This can significantly slow down the application's response time and potentially render it completely unusable.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2024-7779 is on the availability of the danswer-ai/danswer application. Exploitation can cause severe performance degradation or complete denial of service, disrupting business operations that depend on this software for AI-based data querying or analysis. For European organizations, this could mean downtime in critical AI services, leading to operational delays, reduced productivity, and potential financial losses. Since the vulnerability does not affect confidentiality or integrity, data breaches or unauthorized data modifications are not a direct concern. However, service unavailability can indirectly affect customer trust and compliance with service-level agreements. The lack of required authentication and user interaction increases the risk of widespread exploitation if the software is exposed to untrusted networks. Industries in Europe that rely heavily on AI and data analytics, such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing, may face significant operational risks if their deployments of danswer-ai/danswer are vulnerable.

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/829f7d9f-8755-4362-bd40-801e4690dcdc (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 15 Oct 2025, 13:22 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-1333

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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