CVE-2020-15598

Exp

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

Published: 2020-10-06 Last update: 2025-07-03 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2020-15598 is rated High Exploit Risk (75.3/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 3.79%). Core evidence: 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Mandatory action: Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2020-15598

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2020-15598

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2025-11-21 4.10% 3.79% -0.32%
2 2025-11-18 3.79% 4.10% +0.32%
3 2025-08-24 3.79%

Full EPSS history (16 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2020-15598

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
3.9 3.6 [email protected]
5.0 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and predictable.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:N)
No confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:N)
No integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:P)
Partial availability impact.
10.0 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2020-15598

OS Trackers for CVE-2020-15598

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2020-15598 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (modsecurity), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-15598
ubuntu medium CVE-2020-15598 medium priority: Ubuntu including 2 source packages (modsecurity, modsecurity-apache), 26 status rows across 13 suites (bionic, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 21, DNE 3, ignored 1, released 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-15598

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2020-15598

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
owasp modsecurity >= 3.0.0, <= 3.0.4 cpe:2.3:a:owasp:modsecurity:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 10.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2020-15598

cvelogic Threat Intelligence