CVE-2025-48866VulnerabilityPublished 2 Jun 2025Updated 9 Jun 2025

CVE-2025-48866: ModSecurity · Excessive Platform Resource Consumption within a Loop

Affects ModSecuritySource CVE Database V5

Mentioned vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-47947

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High : upgrade to 2.9.10 soon.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

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

EPSS: 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 57% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 2.9.10

CVSS:3.1/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 2 Jun 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

Upgrade owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity to 2.9.10.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubowasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity`pkg:github/owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity`Other threats	Affected <2.9.10	Fixed in 2.9.10

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

AI-suggested

European organizations should prioritize upgrading ModSecurity to version 2.9.10 or later, where this vulnerability is fixed. If immediate upgrading is not feasible, administrators should audit their ModSecurity rulesets to identify and disable any rules that use the `sanitiseArg` or `sanitizeArg` actions, as these are the vectors triggering the excessive resource consumption. Monitoring WAF logs for unusual spikes in argument processing or resource usage can help detect attempted exploitation. Implementing rate limiting and web server resource controls can also help mitigate the impact of potential DoS attempts. Organizations should ensure their incident response and business continuity plans account for potential WAF outages. Finally, maintaining an up-to-date inventory of ModSecurity deployments and versions across the infrastructure will facilitate timely patch management and vulnerability remediation.

Description

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. Versions prior to 2.9.10 contain a denial of service vulnerability similar to GHSA-859r-vvv8-rm8r/CVE-2025-47947. The `sanitiseArg` (and `sanitizeArg` - this is the same action but an alias) is vulnerable to adding an excessive number of arguments, thereby leading to denial of service. Version 2.9.10 fixes the issue. As a workaround, avoid using rules that contain the `sanitiseArg` (or `sanitizeArg`) action.

Impact

For European organizations deploying ModSecurity as part of their web application security stack, this vulnerability poses a significant risk of denial of service. An attacker can remotely trigger the excessive resource consumption without authentication or user interaction, potentially causing the WAF or the underlying web server to become unavailable. This can lead to service outages, impacting business continuity, customer access, and potentially causing financial and reputational damage. Since ModSecurity is often deployed in front of critical web applications, the disruption could affect e-commerce platforms, government portals, financial services, and other sectors reliant on continuous web availability. The lack of confidentiality or integrity impact means data breaches are unlikely from this vulnerability alone, but the availability impact can be severe. Additionally, denial of service conditions can be leveraged as part of multi-stage attacks or to distract security teams. The absence of known exploits in the wild suggests that proactive patching can effectively mitigate risk before widespread exploitation occurs.

CWE-1050Excessive Platform Resource Consumption within a Loop (opens in a new tab)
Base weakness
The product has a loop body or loop condition that contains a control element that directly or indirectly consumes platform resources, e.g. messaging, sessions, locks, or file descriptors.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 11 Jul 2025, 02:33 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-1050

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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