CVE-2025-53530: Wegia Web Manager DoS Vulnerability

CVE-2025-53530 Overview

WeGIA is a web manager designed for charitable institutions. A vulnerability exists in the WeGIA server that allows attackers to send excessively long HTTP GET requests to a specific URL endpoint. This issue stems from the lack of validation for the length of the errorstr parameter. Testing confirmed that the server processes URLs up to 8,142 characters, resulting in high resource consumption, elevated latency, timeouts, and read errors. This makes the server susceptible to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. The vulnerability has been addressed in version 3.3.0.

Critical Impact

Unauthenticated attackers can cause service disruption through resource exhaustion by sending oversized HTTP GET requests, potentially rendering charitable institution web management systems unavailable.

Affected Products

• WeGIA versions prior to 3.3.0
• WeGIA web manager installations exposed to network access
• Charitable institution management platforms running vulnerable WeGIA instances

Discovery Timeline

• July 7, 2025 - CVE-2025-53530 published to NVD
• July 10, 2025 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-53530

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability is classified under CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling). The WeGIA server fails to implement proper input validation on the errorstr parameter, allowing attackers to submit HTTP GET requests with URLs containing an excessive number of characters. When the server attempts to process these oversized requests, it consumes significant computational resources without any protective throttling mechanism.

The attack can be executed remotely over the network without requiring authentication or user interaction. While the vulnerability does not impact data confidentiality or integrity, it poses a significant threat to system availability. Successful exploitation results in resource exhaustion conditions including elevated latency, connection timeouts, and read errors that can render the service unavailable to legitimate users.

Root Cause

The root cause of this vulnerability is the absence of input length validation for the errorstr URL parameter in the WeGIA web application. Without enforced limits on parameter size, the application accepts and attempts to process arbitrarily long input strings. This lack of boundary checking allows attackers to craft requests that consume disproportionate server resources, creating a resource exhaustion condition.

Attack Vector

The attack is network-based and can be executed by any unauthenticated remote attacker with network access to the vulnerable WeGIA server. The attacker crafts HTTP GET requests containing an excessively long errorstr parameter value, approaching or exceeding 8,142 characters. When multiple such requests are sent in succession, the cumulative resource consumption overwhelms the server's capacity to handle legitimate traffic.

The attack does not require any special privileges or user interaction, making it particularly dangerous for publicly accessible WeGIA installations. The low complexity of the attack means that even unsophisticated threat actors can successfully exploit this vulnerability.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-53530

Indicators of Compromise

• HTTP GET requests containing unusually long URL parameters exceeding normal operational lengths
• Server logs showing repeated requests with errorstr parameters containing thousands of characters
• Evidence of connection timeouts and read errors correlating with incoming traffic spikes
• Abnormal resource utilization patterns on the WeGIA server during apparent attack windows

Detection Strategies

• Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block HTTP requests with URL lengths exceeding reasonable thresholds
• Configure log analysis to alert on patterns of requests with abnormally large parameter values
• Deploy network intrusion detection systems (IDS) with signatures for oversized HTTP GET requests targeting WeGIA endpoints
• Monitor server performance metrics for sudden spikes in resource consumption coinciding with unusual traffic patterns

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable detailed access logging on the WeGIA web server to capture full URL parameters for forensic analysis
• Set up automated alerting for server response time degradation and timeout errors
• Monitor CPU, memory, and network bandwidth utilization on WeGIA hosting infrastructure
• Implement real-time log aggregation to correlate potential DoS attack patterns across multiple request sources

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-53530

Immediate Actions Required

• Upgrade WeGIA to version 3.3.0 or later which contains the security fix for this vulnerability
• Deploy web application firewall rules to limit maximum URL and parameter lengths on WeGIA endpoints
• Consider temporarily restricting network access to the WeGIA server to trusted IP ranges if upgrade cannot be performed immediately
• Enable rate limiting on the web server to reduce the impact of potential DoS attempts

Patch Information

The vulnerability has been addressed in WeGIA version 3.3.0. Organizations should update to this version or later to remediate the vulnerability. Additional details about the security fix can be found in the WeGIA GitHub Security Advisory.

Workarounds

• Configure the web server or reverse proxy to enforce maximum URL length restrictions (recommended: limit to 2,048 characters or less based on legitimate application needs)
• Implement request rate limiting at the network perimeter or load balancer level to throttle excessive requests from single sources
• Deploy a WAF with rules specifically targeting oversized HTTP parameters
• Consider placing the WeGIA application behind an authentication gateway to limit exposure to unauthenticated attackers

# Example Apache configuration to limit URL length
# Add to httpd.conf or virtual host configuration
LimitRequestLine 2048
LimitRequestFieldSize 2048

# Example nginx configuration
# Add to server block
large_client_header_buffers 4 2k;