CVE-2026-73857 PUBLISHED

ModSecurity v3 XML Request Body Processor Uninitialized Pointer Dereference Vulnerability

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 13.08.2026 Published: 09.11.2026 Updated: 09.11.2026

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. From 3.0.15 until 3.0.17, XML request body processing with SecParseXmlIntoArgs set to On or OnlyArgs can leave XMLNodes::parsing_ctx_arg uninitialized in the SAX end-element callback. A single crafted unauthenticated HTTP request can make a worker dereference the pointer, resulting in a constant-value write to an attacker-controlled address. The resulting memory corruption can terminate the worker and may disclose memory or redirect execution. Earlier 3.0.x releases and ModSecurity 2.x do not use the affected path. This issue is fixed in version 3.0.17.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS Score: 7.5

Product Status

Vendor owasp-modsecurity
Product ModSecurity
Versions
  • Version >= 3.0.15, < 3.0.17 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-787: Out-of-bounds Write CWE
  • CWE-824: Access of Uninitialized Pointer CWE