Vulnerability record · CVE-2020-15598 · published 6 October 2020
CVE-2020-15598: Owasp modsecurity vulnerability
Owasp · Modsecurity
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
Description
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
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected products
2 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.
References
| Link | Tags |
|---|---|
| http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/159185/ModSecurity-3.0.x-Denial-Of-Service.html | Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry |
| http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2020/Sep/32 | Mailing ListThird Party Advisory |
| https://coreruleset.org/20200914/cve-2020-15598/ | ExploitPatchThird Party Advisory |
| https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4765 | Third Party Advisory |
| https://www.modsecurity.org | ProductVendor Advisory |
| http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/159185/ModSecurity-3.0.x-Denial-Of-Service.html | Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry |
| http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2020/Sep/32 | Mailing ListThird Party Advisory |
| https://coreruleset.org/20200914/cve-2020-15598/ | ExploitPatchThird Party Advisory |
| https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4765 | Third Party Advisory |
| https://www.modsecurity.org | ProductVendor Advisory |
Track CVE-2020-15598 inside VULONE
Watch it alongside the ransomware crews, C2 infrastructure and forum chatter that reference it, query it through the API and pull it into your SIEM over TAXII.
Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2020-15598), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-29). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
