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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2026-73857 json

ModSecurity v3 XML Request Body Processor Uninitialized Pointer Dereference Vulnerability

published last mo. modified yesterday also EUVD-2026-120508 , GHSA-jx3r-phvx-2jmj

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 34%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

Is CVE-2026-73857 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
yesterday

Exploit prediction

0.40% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 34% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • owasp-modsecurity ModSecurity

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.