CVE-2020-5236 MEDIUM

CVE-2020-5236: Catastrophic backtracking in regex allows Denial of Service in Waitress

Vendor Pylons
Product Waitress
Weakness CWE-400
Published February 4, 2020
Last update August 4, 2024

CVSS base score

5.7/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required Low
User interaction Required
Confidentiality None
Integrity None

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Waitress version 1.4.2 allows a DOS attack When waitress receives a header that contains invalid characters. When a header like "Bad-header: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\x10" is received, it will cause the regular expression engine to catastrophically backtrack causing the process to use 100% CPU time and blocking any other interactions. This allows an attacker to send a single request with an invalid header and take the service offline. This issue was introduced in version 1.4.2 when the regular expression was updated to attempt to match the behaviour required by errata associated with RFC7230. The regular expression that is used to validate incoming headers has been updated in version 1.4.3, it is recommended that people upgrade to the new version of Waitress as soon as possible.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

February 4, 2020 CVE published
August 4, 2024 Record updated