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OpenAdvisories
High · 7.5 CVE-2026-73857 EUVD-2026-120508

ModSecurity v3 XML Request Body Processor Uninitialized Pointer Dereference Vulnerability

Published Nov 9, 2026 · Updated Nov 10, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
owasp-modsecurity ModSecurity >= 3.0.15, < 3.0.17 —

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 No fix yet —
Debian 13 modsecurity No fix yet —
Debian 12 modsecurity No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 modsecurity No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS modsecurity No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS modsecurity No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS modsecurity No fix yet —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS modsecurity No fix yet —

Advisories 1

References