Django Potential Denial of Service (DoS) on Windows

Description

An issue was discovered in Django 5.1 before 5.1.8 and 5.0 before 5.0.14. The NFKC normalization is slow on Windows. As a consequence, django.contrib.auth.views.LoginView, django.contrib.auth.views.LogoutView, and django.views.i18n.set_language are subject to a potential denial-of-service attack via certain inputs with a very large number of Unicode characters.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2025-04-02 15:31:37 UTC
Updated
2025-04-09 20:02:07 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2025-04-02 20:11:40 UTC
NVD published
2025-04-02

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.17% 37.93%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
5.8 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:L 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: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:L)
Might cause slowdowns, glitches, or partial disruption—not a full brick.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Affected packages (2)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
pip Django >= 5.0, < 5.0.14 5.0.14
pip Django >= 5.1, < 5.1.8 5.1.8

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence