VulnerabilityPublished 29 Nov 2025Updated 3 Dec 2025

CVE-2025-58436: OpenPrinting cups · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects OpenPrinting cupsSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.1 Medium : upgrade to 2.4.15 when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 09:15 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.1Medium

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

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 13% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 2.4.15

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: High
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: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
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 29 Nov 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

Upgrade openprinting/cups to 2.4.15.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubopenprinting/cups`pkg:github/openprinting/cups`Other threats	Affected <2.4.15	Fixed in 2.4.15

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

AI-suggested

1. Upgrade all CUPS installations to version 2.4.15 or later where the vulnerability is patched. 2. Implement network segmentation and firewall rules to restrict access to the cupsd service only to trusted hosts and users, minimizing exposure to potentially malicious clients. 3. Configure timeout settings and connection limits on the cupsd daemon to detect and drop slow or stalled connections more aggressively, if configurable. 4. Monitor printing service logs and network traffic for unusual connection patterns, such as slow or partial data transmissions, which may indicate attempted exploitation. 5. Employ host-based intrusion detection systems (HIDS) to alert on abnormal resource consumption by the cupsd process. 6. Educate internal users and administrators about the risk of local network attacks and enforce strict access controls on internal networks. 7. Regularly audit and update printing infrastructure components as part of vulnerability management programs to ensure timely patching.

Description

OpenPrinting CUPS is an open source printing system for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Prior to version 2.4.15, a client that connects to cupsd but sends slow messages, e.g.only one byte per second, delays cupsd as a whole, such that it becomes unusable by other clients. This issue has been patched in version 2.4.15.

Impact

For European organizations, this vulnerability primarily threatens the availability of printing services managed by CUPS on Linux and Unix-like systems. Printing infrastructure is critical in many sectors including government, healthcare, finance, and manufacturing. A successful exploitation could disrupt business operations by making printing services unavailable, potentially delaying document processing and workflows. Although the vulnerability does not compromise data confidentiality or integrity, the denial of service could indirectly affect operational continuity and productivity. Organizations with large-scale or centralized printing environments are at higher risk of significant impact. Additionally, sectors with strict compliance and audit requirements may face challenges if printing logs or records become inaccessible. The requirement for local network access limits remote exploitation but insider threats or compromised internal hosts could leverage this vulnerability. Given the medium severity and absence of known exploits, the immediate risk is moderate but warrants timely remediation to avoid service degradation or denial.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
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
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (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 6 Dec 2025, 04:20 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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