Skip to main content
VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-61812: ModSecurity · Improper Encoding or Decoding of Data

Affects ModSecuritySource CVE Database V5

0
Compare

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.3 Medium : upgrade to 3.0.17 or 2.9.15 when convenient.

Data as of 9 Nov 2026, 21:49 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score
6.3Medium
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Thin evidence

One scorer or none
CVSS scores by source
CNA (GitHub_M)CVSS 4.06.3
Patch
Available – fixed in 3.0.17, 2.9.15
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 9 Nov 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq 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 9 Nov 2026.

What to do

Upgrade ModSecurity to 3.0.17 or 2.9.15.

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
owasp-modsecurityModSecurityAffected
  • >=3.0.0 <3.0.17
Fixed in
  • 3.0.17
owasp-modsecurityModSecurityAffected
  • <2.9.15
Fixed in
  • 2.9.15

AI-suggested

Upgrade ModSecurity to version 2.9.15 or later, or 3.0.17 or later, where this vulnerability has been fixed. No other mitigation is required as the issue is resolved in these versions.

Description

CVE-2026-61812 affects ModSecurity, an open source web application firewall engine. Versions prior to 2.9.15 and between 3.0.0 and before 3.0.17 have an improper encoding/decoding issue in the t:htmlEntityDecode function. This function recognizes only a limited set of named HTML entities, causing discrepancies between ModSecurity's transformations and those of browsers or backends. Attackers can exploit this by encoding ASCII separators and operators with unhandled or alias entity names to bypass security rules. The vulnerability is fixed in versions 2.9.15 and 3.0.17.

References

Community reviews

Loading reviews…