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HIGH

CVE-2020-15598

CVSS v3

7.5

HIGH

EPSS Score

2.9 %

exploit probability, as of 2026-10-19

CISA KEV

No

known exploited

Exploitation

—

SSVC status

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Affected and fixed versions

Packages from OSV.dev and products from the vendors' CSAF advisories.

version not verifiedVersions not verified: read as OSV.dev and the vendors publish them, not checked against each vendor's release list.

Packages

  • modsecurityBitnamifrom 3.0.0 · fixed in 3.0.5and 1 other package

Vendor advisories

  • CVE-2020-15598 Red Hat Product Security

    libmodsecurity: specially crafted payload could result in a DoS

Full record on NVD

Description

Trustwave ModSecurity 3.x through 3.0.4 allows denial of service via a special request. NOTE: The discoverer reports "Trustwave has signaled they are disputing our claims." The CVE suggests that there is a security issue with how ModSecurity handles regular expressions that can result in a Denial of Service condition. The vendor does not consider this as a security issue because1) there is no default configuration issue here. An attacker would need to know that a rule using a potentially problematic regular expression was in place, 2) the attacker would need to know the basic nature of the regular expression itself to exploit any resource issues. It's well known that regular expression usage can be taxing on system resources regardless of the use case. It is up to the administrator to decide on when it is appropriate to trade resources for potential security benefit

Technical details

Published
2020-10-06

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-15598?

Trustwave ModSecurity 3.x through 3.0.4 allows denial of service via a special request. NOTE: The discoverer reports "Trustwave has signaled they are disputing our claims." The CVE suggests that there is a security issue with how ModSecurity handles regular expressions that can result in a Denial of Service condition. The vendor does not consider this as a security issue because1) there is no default configuration issue here. An attacker would need to know that a rule using a potentially problematic regular expression was in place, 2) the attacker would need to know the basic nature of the regular expression itself to exploit any resource issues. It's well known that regular expression usage can be taxing on system resources regardless of the use case. It is up to the administrator to decide on when it is appropriate to trade resources for potential security benefit

Is CVE-2020-15598 actively exploited?

Active exploitation of CVE-2020-15598 has not been confirmed. Its EPSS score was 2.9% on 2026-10-19, the estimated probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2020-15598?

CVE-2020-15598 has a CVSS v3 base score of 7.5 (HIGH severity).

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