CVE-2025-53531: Wegia Web Manager DoS Vulnerability

CVE-2025-53531 Overview

CVE-2025-53531 is a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability affecting WeGIA, a web manager designed for charitable institutions. The vulnerability stems from improper input validation in the handling of HTTP GET requests, specifically in the fid parameter. Due to missing length validation, attackers can craft excessively long HTTP GET requests that cause significant resource consumption, elevated latency, timeouts, and read errors on the server.

Critical Impact

This vulnerability enables remote unauthenticated attackers to disrupt availability of charitable institution web management systems through resource exhaustion attacks.

Affected Products

• WeGIA versions prior to 3.3.0
• WeGIA web manager installations accessible via network

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-07-07 - CVE-2025-53531 published to NVD
• 2025-07-10 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-53531

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability is classified under CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling). The WeGIA server fails to implement proper validation for the length of the fid parameter in HTTP GET requests. Testing confirmed that the server processes URLs containing up to 8,142 characters without imposing any restrictions.

When exploited, the server attempts to process these oversized requests, leading to excessive resource consumption. This manifests as high CPU and memory usage, elevated response latency, request timeouts, and read errors. The cumulative effect of multiple malicious requests can render the service unavailable to legitimate users.

Root Cause

The root cause is the absence of input length validation on the fid parameter within the HTTP GET request handling logic. Without proper bounds checking, the application allocates resources to process arbitrarily long input strings, creating an exploitable condition for resource exhaustion attacks.

Attack Vector

The attack can be executed remotely over the network without any authentication or user interaction. An attacker sends crafted HTTP GET requests with an abnormally long fid parameter value. The vulnerability requires no special privileges and can be exploited by any network-accessible attacker.

The exploitation mechanism involves sending HTTP GET requests with elongated URL parameters. When the server receives these requests, it attempts to parse and process the entire parameter value, consuming system resources in the process. Repeated requests can exhaust server resources and cause service degradation or complete unavailability. For detailed technical information, see the GitHub Security Advisory.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-53531

Indicators of Compromise

• HTTP GET requests with unusually long URL parameters (exceeding 8,000 characters)
• Spike in request processing time for specific endpoints utilizing the fid parameter
• Increased server resource utilization (CPU/memory) without corresponding legitimate traffic increase
• Server timeout errors and connection read errors in access logs

Detection Strategies

• Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to flag or block HTTP requests with URL lengths exceeding normal operational thresholds
• Monitor HTTP access logs for requests with abnormally long query strings targeting WeGIA endpoints
• Deploy rate limiting on endpoints that accept the fid parameter to mitigate volumetric attacks
• Configure intrusion detection systems (IDS) to alert on patterns consistent with HTTP-based DoS attacks

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable detailed logging for all HTTP requests including full URL parameters
• Set up alerts for sudden increases in request latency or server resource consumption
• Monitor for patterns of repeated requests from single IP addresses with long parameters
• Track server health metrics including CPU, memory, and connection pool utilization

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-53531

Immediate Actions Required

• Upgrade WeGIA to version 3.3.0 or later immediately
• Implement URL length restrictions at the web server or reverse proxy level as an interim measure
• Configure rate limiting for incoming HTTP requests to reduce impact of potential attacks
• Review access logs for evidence of exploitation attempts

Patch Information

The vulnerability has been addressed in WeGIA version 3.3.0. Organizations running affected versions should upgrade to this patched release as soon as possible. The fix implements proper validation for the fid parameter length, preventing the processing of excessively long values. Refer to the GitHub Security Advisory for additional details.

Workarounds

• Configure web server or reverse proxy to reject requests with URL lengths exceeding 4,096 characters
• Implement request rate limiting at the network edge to mitigate volumetric attacks
• Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) with rules to detect and block anomalous request patterns
• Consider temporarily restricting access to affected endpoints until patching is complete

# Example nginx configuration to limit URL length
# Add to server block configuration
large_client_header_buffers 4 8k;
client_header_buffer_size 4k;

# Reject requests with query strings exceeding 4096 bytes
if ($query_string ~* "^.{4096,}$") {
    return 414;
}