High severity · published Jun 2, 2025
CVE-2025-48866
ModSecurity has possible DoS vulnerability in sanitiseArg action
7.5
CVSS
0.8%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.8% · higher than 57% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
MO
ModSecurity · owasp-modsecurity
< 2.9.10 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-48866
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-48866
Patch
https://github.com/owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity/commit/3a54ccea62d3f7151bb08cb78d60c5e90b53ca2e
Not Applicable
https://github.com/owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity/security/advisories/GHSA-859r-vvv8-rm8r
Exploit
https://github.com/owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity/security/advisories/GHSA-f82j-8pp7-cw2w
Product
https://github.com/owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity/wiki/Reference-Manual-(v2.x)#sanitisearg
Mailing List
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/06/msg00009.html
More from ModSecurity
8.6
CVE-2026-52747
ModSecurity: Multipart form-data parser silently strips embedded line breaks from form-field values, enabling request-body inspection bypass
7.5
CVE-2026-42268
ModSecurity: Unsigned integer underflow in @verifySSN / @verifyCPF / @verifySVNR operators
7.5
CVE-2026-30923
libModSecurity3 denial of service via segfault when using t:hexDecode on single-character query strings
7.5
CVE-2025-47947
ModSecurity Has Possible DoS Vulnerability
7.5
CVE-2025-27110
Libmodsecurity3 has possible bypass of encoded HTML entities