Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.9.5
- Affected Plugin
- Safe SVG
- Affected Version
<= 1.9.4- CVSS
- 6.5Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- CVE
CVE-2019-18855
At a glance
CVE-2019-18855 is a medium-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the Safe SVG WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.9.4. It carries a CVSS score of 6.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high availability impact). The issue is fixed in version 1.9.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed November 2019, reported by Nguyen Thanh Nguyen.
Vulnerability Overview
A Denial Of Service vulnerability exists in the safe-svg (aka Safe SVG) plugin through 1.9.4 for WordPress, related to potentially unwanted elements or attributes.
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 interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on availability.
CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Reaching this weakness in Safe SVG <= 1.9.4 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 Safe SVG the fix is 1.9.5: builds <= 1.9.4 are affected, anything from 1.9.5 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.9.5, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Safe SVG: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Safe SVG 1.9.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
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