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OpenAdvisories
High · 7.3 CVE-2022-39956 EUVD-2022-42400GHSA-5xc6-pmr2-qj78

Partial rule set bypass in OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set for HTTP multipart requests using character encoding in the Content-Type or Content-Transfer-Encoding header

Published Sep 20, 2022 · Updated Nov 3, 2025 · Assigned by NCSC.ch

Description

The OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) is affected by a partial rule set bypass for HTTP multipart requests by submitting a payload that uses a character encoding scheme via the Content-Type or the deprecated Content-Transfer-Encoding multipart MIME header fields that will not be decoded and inspected by the web application firewall engine and the rule set. The multipart payload will therefore bypass detection. A vulnerable backend that supports these encoding schemes can potentially be exploited. The legacy CRS versions 3.0.x and 3.1.x are affected, as well as the currently supported versions 3.2.1 and 3.3.2. Integrators and users are advised upgrade to 3.2.2 and 3.3.3 respectively. The mitigation against these vulnerabilities depends on the installation of the latest ModSecurity version (v2.9.6 / v3.0.8).

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set 3.0.x, 3.1.x, unspecified – ≤ 3.2.1, unspecified – ≤ 3.3.2 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 modsecurity-crs 3.3.4-1 —
Debian 13 modsecurity-crs 3.3.4-1 —
Debian 12 modsecurity-crs 3.3.4-1 —
Debian 11 modsecurity-crs 3.3.4-1~deb11u1 DLA-4265-1
Debian 10 modsecurity-crs 3.2.3-0+deb10u3 DLA-3293-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 modsecurity-crs No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS modsecurity-crs No fix yet —
Ubuntu 25.10 modsecurity-crs No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS modsecurity-crs No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS modsecurity-crs No fix yet —
Show 3 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS modsecurity-crs No fix yet —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS modsecurity-crs No fix yet —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS modsecurity-crs No fix yet —

Advisories 3

References