ModSecurity: Multipart form-data parser silently strips embedded line breaks from form-field values, enabling request-body inspection bypass

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. Prior to 3.0.16, the multipart/form-data request body parser in libmodsecurity silently removes embedded line breaks from non-file form-field values before exporting them to ARGS and ARGS_POST because src/request_body_processor/multipart.cc overwrites reserved bytes in m_reserve instead of appending the current buffer. This creates a parser differential between ModSecurity and backend applications that preserve line breaks in form fields, allowing rules that inspect ARGS or ARGS_POST to miss payloads whose dangerous syntax depends on a line break. This issue is fixed in version 3.0.16.

ModSecurity: Transformation utf8toUnicode produces wrong output on i386 architecture

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. From 3.0.0 through 3.0.15, the t:utf8toUnicode transformation in src/actions/transformations/utf8_to_unicode.cc produces wrong output on i386 architecture because snprintf uses sizeof on a char pointer rather than the length of the unicode buffer, allowing rules that use this transformation to be bypassed on i386 architecture. This issue is fixed in version 3.0.16.

WAF bypass of the ModSecurity v3 release line

ModSecurity / libModSecurity 3.0.0 to 3.0.11 is affected by a WAF bypass for path-based payloads submitted via specially crafted request URLs. ModSecurity v3 decodes percent-encoded characters present in request URLs before it separates the URL path component from the optional query string component. This results in an impedance mismatch versus RFC compliant back-end applications. The vulnerability hides an attack payload in the path component of the URL from WAF rules inspecting it. A back-end may be vulnerable if it uses the path component of request URLs to construct queries. Integrators and users are advised to upgrade to 3.0.12. The ModSecurity v2 release line is not affected by this vulnerability.

ModSecurity: Unsigned integer underflow in @verifySSN / @verifyCPF / @verifySVNR operators

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. From 3.0.0 to before 3.0.15, there is an unhandled exception (std::out_of_range) caused by unsigned integer underflow in libmodsecurity3 if the user (administrator) uses a rule any of @verifySSN, @verifyCPF, or @verifySVNR. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.0.15.

libModSecurity3 denial of service via segfault when using t:hexDecode on single-character query strings

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. Libmodsecurity is one component of the ModSecurity v3 project. A segmentation fault occurs when a rule using the t:hexDecode transformation inspects a query string parameter containing a single character. An attacker can exploit this to crash worker processes, causing a denial of service. Service resumes once the attack stops as worker processes recover from the segfault. All versions before 3.0.15 of libModSecurity3 are affected. This has been patched in version 3.0.15.

ModSecurity's Insufficient Return Value Handling can Lead to XSS and Source Code Disclosure

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. In versions 2.9.11 and below, an attacker can override the HTTP response’s Content-Type, which could lead to several issues depending on the HTTP scenario. For example, we have demonstrated the potential for XSS and arbitrary script source code disclosure in the latest version of mod_security2. This issue is fixed in version 2.9.12.

mod_security: a segfault and a resultant crash of a worker process in some configurations with certain inputs

Trustwave ModSecurity 3.0.5 through 3.0.8 before 3.0.9 allows a denial of service (worker crash and unresponsiveness) because some inputs cause a segfault in the Transaction class for some configurations.

ModSecurity 3.0.0 has XSS via an onerror attribute of an IMG element. NOTE: a third party has disputed this issue because it may only apply to environments without a Core Rule Set configured

mod_security: DoS Vulnerability in Four Transformations

Trustwave ModSecurity 3.x before 3.0.10 has Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity.

Trustwave ModSecurity 3.0.0 through 3.0.3 allows an attacker to send crafted requests that may, when sent quickly in large volumes, lead to the server becoming slow or unresponsive (Denial of Service) because of a flaw in Transaction::addRequestHeader in transaction.cc.

ModSecurity 3.x before 3.0.4 mishandles key-value pair parsing, as demonstrated by a "string index out of range" error and worker-process crash for a "Cookie: =abc" header.

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

ModSecurity 3.x through 3.0.5 mishandles excessively nested JSON objects. Crafted JSON objects with nesting tens-of-thousands deep could result in the web server being unable to service legitimate requests. Even a moderately large (e.g., 300KB) HTTP request can occupy one of the limited NGINX worker processes for minutes and consume almost all of the available CPU on the machine. Modsecurity 2 is similarly vulnerable: the affected versions include 2.8.0 through 2.9.4.

mod_security: incorrect parsing of HTTP multipart requests leads to web application firewall bypass

In ModSecurity before 2.9.6 and 3.x before 3.0.8, HTTP multipart requests were incorrectly parsed and could bypass the Web Application Firewall. NOTE: this is related to CVE-2022-39956 but can be considered independent changes to the ModSecurity (C language) codebase.

ModSecurity has possible DoS vulnerability in sanitiseArg action

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.