CVE-2025-48866 | ModSecurity has possible DoS vulnerability in sanitiseArg action

Exp

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. Versions prior to 2.9.10 contain a denial of service vulnerability similar to GHSA-859r-vvv8-rm8r/CVE-2025-47947. The `sanitiseArg` (and `sanitizeArg` - this is the same action but an alias) is vulnerable to adding an excessive number of arguments, thereby leading to denial of service. Version 2.9.10 fixes the issue. As a workaround, avoid using rules that contain the `sanitiseArg` (or `sanitizeArg`) action.

Published: 2025-06-02 Last update: 2025-07-02 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Analyzed，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2025-48866 is rated High Exploit Risk (72.9/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 1.07%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). 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-2025-48866

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

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2025-48866

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 2026-03-29 0.38% 1.07% +0.69%
2 2026-03-04 0.31% 0.38% +0.06%
3 2026-02-26 — 0.31% —

Full EPSS history (11 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2025-48866

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]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2025-48866

OS Trackers for CVE-2025-48866

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2025-48866 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (modsecurity-apache), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-48866
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-48866
suse high CVE-2025-48866 severity important: SUSE including 7 source package names (apache2-mod_security2-2.8.0-7.9.1, apache2-mod_security2-2.9.10-1.1, …), 27 product×package rows across 26 product lines (SUSE Enterprise Storage 7.1, SUSE Liberty Linux 9, … (26 product lines)): Fixed 27. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-48866/
ubuntu medium CVE-2025-48866 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (modsecurity-apache), 10 status rows across 10 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): released 9, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2025-48866

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2025-48866

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
owasp modsecurity < 2.9.10 cpe:2.3:a:owasp:modsecurity:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2025-48866

cvelogic Threat Intelligence