WP-GeSHi-Highlight <= 1.4.3 Authenticated (Author+) ReDoS
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Unpatched
- Affected Version
<= 1.4.3- CVSS
- 4.3Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- CVE
CVE-2024-13896
At a glance
CVE-2024-13896 is a medium-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the WP-GeSHi-Highlight WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.4.3. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Author level or above. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed March 2025, reported by Pierre Rudloff.
Vulnerability Overview
The WP-GeSHi-Highlight — rock-solid syntax highlighting for 259 languages plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Regex denial of service in all versions up to, and including, 1.4.3. This is due to the plugin not properly restricting regexes supplied to the wp_geshi_filter_replace_code() function. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Author-level access and above, to cause a denial of service based on a bad regex.
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.
CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
WP-GeSHi-Highlight <= 1.4.3 carries this weakness at wp_geshi_filter_replace_code(), and reaching it takes an account at Author level or above. 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. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for WP-GeSHi-Highlight yet, so installs running <= 1.4.3 stay exposed until the vendor ships one.
Remediation
No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.
How does WordSec protect against this?
An attacker needs Author access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C