Overview
The CVE-2025-53538 vulnerability is a critical flaw identified in Suricata, a network Intrusion Detection System (IDS), Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), and Network Security Monitoring (NSM) engine. This flaw affects versions 7.0.10 and below and 8.0.0-beta1 through 8.0.0-rc1. It can lead to uncontrolled memory usage, causing loss of visibility and potential system compromise or data leakage, thus posing a significant threat to the security of affected systems.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-53538
Severity: High (CVSS: 7.5)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Uncontrolled memory usage, potential system compromise, or data leakage.
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
Suricata | 7.0.10 and below
Suricata | 8.0.0-beta1 through 8.0.0-rc1
How the Exploit Works
The exploit takes advantage of a mishandling of data on the HTTP2 stream 0 in the affected Suricata versions. This mishandling causes uncontrolled memory usage. An attacker sending malicious HTTP/2 frames targeting stream 0 can trigger the vulnerability, leading to loss of visibility, which could potentially result in system compromise or data leakage.
Conceptual Example Code
Given the nature of this vulnerability, a high-level conceptual example might involve delivering malicious HTTP/2 frames to the target system. Conceptually, it would look something like this:
POST / HTTP/2
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/http2-frames
{ "malicious_frame": "stream0_targeted_payload" }This conceptual code is designed to represent the method of attack rather than provide a practical example of an exploit. In a real-world scenario, the malicious_frame content would be designed to exploit the specific memory handling vulnerability in Suricata.
