CVE-2020-15598: High severity modsecurity vulnerability

Published Sep 16, 2020
·
Updated

DISPUTED Trustwave ModSecurity 3.x through 3.0.4 allows denial of service via a special request. NOTE: The discoverer reports "Trustwave has signaled they are disputing our claims." The CVE suggests that there is a security issue with how ModSecurity handles regular expressions that can result in a Denial of Service condition. The vendor does not consider this as a security issue because1) there is no default configuration issue here. An attacker would need to know that a rule using a potentially problematic regular expression was in place, 2) the attacker would need to know the basic nature of the regular expression itself to exploit any resource issues. It's well known that regular expression usage can be taxing on system resources regardless of the use case. It is up to the administrator to decide on when it is appropriate to trade resources for potential security benefit.

Other sources

ModSecurity v3.0.x is affected by a Denial of Service vulnerability due to the global matching of regular expressions. The combination of a non-anchored regular expression and the ModSecurity “capture” action can be exploited via a specially crafted payload.

Known Affected Software Configurations:

ModSecurity v3.0.0 ModSecurity v3.0.1 ModSecurity v3.0.2 ModSecurity v3.0.3 ModSecurity v3.0.4 (patch for this version available

Affected Software

4 affected componentsFixes available
debian/modsecurity
3.0.3-1+deb10u23.0.4-23.0.9-1+deb12u13.0.10-1
Trustwave ModSecurity>=3.0.0<=3.0.4
Debian Debian Linux=10.0
OWASP Modsecurity>=3.0.0<=3.0.4

Event History

Sep 16, 2020
Data Sourced
03:01 PM
DescriptionSeverityAffected Software
Oct 6, 2020
CVE Published
via MITRE·01:38 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·01:38 PM
Description
Disputed
02:15 PM
Data Sourced
via NVD·02:15 PM
RemedyDescriptionSeverityWeaknessAffected Software
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Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the vulnerability ID for this security issue?

The vulnerability ID for this security issue is CVE-2020-15598.

2

What is the severity of CVE-2020-15598?

The severity of CVE-2020-15598 is high with a CVSS score of 7.5.

3

Which software is affected by CVE-2020-15598?

Trustwave ModSecurity 3.x through 3.0.4 and Debian Debian Linux 10.0 are affected by CVE-2020-15598.

4

How can this vulnerability be exploited?

This vulnerability can be exploited through a special request, leading to a denial of service.

5

Are there any known remediation steps for this vulnerability?

Yes, updating Trustwave ModSecurity to version 3.0.10-1 or applying the appropriate patches for Debian Linux can mitigate this vulnerability.

Contact

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