#VU11476 Resource exhaustion in Django - CVE-2018-7537

Vulnerability identifier: #VU11476

Vulnerability risk: Low

CVSSv4.0: 2.7 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Clear]

CVE-ID: CVE-2018-7537

CWE-ID: CWE-400

Exploitation vector: Network

Exploit availability: No

Vulnerable software:
Django
Web applications / CMS

Vendor: Django Software Foundation

Description
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause DoS condition on the target system.

The weakness exists in the django.utils.html.urlize() function due to it was extremely slow to evaluate certain inputs due to catastrophic backtracking vulnerabilities in two regular expressions. The urlize() function is used to implement the urlize and urlizetrunc template filters, which were thus vulnerable. A remote attacker can cause the service to crash.

Mitigation
Update to versions 2.0.3, 1.11.11 or 1.8.19.

Vulnerable software versions

Django: 1.8 - 1.11.10, 2.0.0 - 2.0.3

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External links
https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2018/mar/06/security-releases/

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Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.