CVE-2024-31994 | Mealie vulnerable to a DoS in recipe image importer (GHSL-2023-228)

Exp

Mealie is a self hosted recipe manager and meal planner. Prior to 1.4.0, an attacker can point the image request to an arbitrarily large file. Mealie will attempt to retrieve this file in whole. If it can be retrieved, it may be stored on the file system in whole (leading to possible disk consumption), however the more likely scenario given resource limitations is that the container will OOM during file retrieval if the target file size is greater than the allocated memory of the container. At best this can be used to force the container to infinitely restart due to OOM (if so configured in `docker-compose.yml), or at worst this can be used to force the Mealie container to crash and remain offline. In the event that the file can be retrieved, the lack of rate limiting on this endpoint also permits an attacker to generate ongoing requests to any target of their choice, potentially contributing to an external-facing DoS attack. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.4.0.

Published: 2024-04-19 Last update: 2025-03-07 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2024-31994 is rated Exploit Available (50/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.05%). 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-2024-31994

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

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2024-31994

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 0.06% 0.05% -0.01%
2 2025-11-18 0.05% 0.06% +0.01%
3 2025-05-31 0.05%

Full EPSS history (5 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2024-31994

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
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:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
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.
2.0 4.0 [email protected]
6.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
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:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
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.
2.0 4.0 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2024-31994

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2024-31994

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
mealie mealie < 1.4.0 cpe:2.3:a:mealie:mealie:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2024-31994

cvelogic Threat Intelligence