CVE-2024-12579

Minify HTML <= 2.1.10 - - Regular Expressions Denial of Service

2024-12-12 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 2.1.11
Affected Plugin: Minify HTML
Affected Version: <= 2.1.10
CVSS: 5.3Medium
Weakness type: CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
CVE: CVE-2024-12579

At a glance

CVE-2024-12579 is a medium-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the Minify HTML WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.1.10. It carries a CVSS score of 5.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.1.11; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2024, reported by Pierre Rudloff.

Vulnerability Overview

The Minify HTML plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in all versions up to, and including, 2.1.10. This is due to processing user-supplied input as a regular expression. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to create comments that can cause catastrophic backtracking and break pages.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed, and no privileges on the target site, and no interaction from a victim user.

CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Reaching this weakness in Minify HTML <= 2.1.10 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Uncontrolled resource consumption means a request can make the server do an amount of work it never bounds, because the size or repetition of the job is taken from the request rather than capped by the code.

A single caller can hold PHP workers, database connections or disk open long enough to slow the site for everyone, without needing any account or any other flaw. For Minify HTML the fix is 2.1.11: builds <= 2.1.10 are affected, anything from 2.1.11 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.1.11, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Minify HTML: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Minify HTML 2.1.11 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-12579 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/80334e81-c33d-464c-9409-f49c34681890 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-12579

Related records

Other vulnerabilities in Minify HTML

CVSS Vector

5.3

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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