Vulnerability · Published Jul 13, 2023 · Assigned by mitre
CVE-2023-38199
Critical 9.8
In plain English
A critical-severity security flaw in the modsecurity-crs package (Debian). There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.7% (higher than 55% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
coreruleset (aka OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set) through 3.3.4 does not detect multiple Content-Type request headers on some platforms. This might allow attackers to bypass a WAF with a crafted payload, aka "Content-Type confusion" between the WAF and the backend application. This occurs when the web application relies on only the last Content-Type header. Other platforms may reject the additional Content-Type header or merge conflicting headers, leading to detection as a malformed header.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:12 | modsecurity-crs | 3.3.4-1+deb12u2 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-38199 |
| Debian:13 | modsecurity-crs | 3.3.5-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-38199 |
| Debian:14 | modsecurity-crs | 3.3.5-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-38199 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | modsecurity-crs | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-38199 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | modsecurity-crs | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-38199 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | modsecurity-crs | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-38199 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | modsecurity-crs | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-38199 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | modsecurity-crs | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-38199 |