CVE-2023-2905

Memory Safety in Cesanta Mongoose 7.10

Public PoCMemory Safety

Published

09 August 2023

Modified

21 November 2024

Patch / advisory

View advisory

CVSS Score v3.1 8.8

Click a component to see what it means

Raw vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS Score 0.010 62th percentile

Risk Priority 66 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2023-2905 is a high-severity Heap-based Buffer Overflow (CWE-122) vulnerability in Cesanta Mongoose. Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data Obfuscation (T1001); ranked in the top 38% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

EU & UK References

🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-34351

Vulnerability Data

Due to a failure in validating the length of a provided MQTT_CMD_PUBLISH parsed message with a variable length header, Cesanta Mongoose, an embeddable web server, version 7.10 is susceptible to a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the default configuration. Version…

7.9 and prior does not appear to be vulnerable. This issue is resolved in version 7.11.

CWE(s): CWE-122 CWE-787

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1001 Data Obfuscation Command And Control

Adversaries may obfuscate command and control traffic to make it more difficult to detect.

attack.mitre.org →

T1001.002 Steganography Command And Control

Adversaries may use steganographic techniques to hide command and control traffic to make detection efforts more difficult.

attack.mitre.org →

T1003.001 LSASS Memory Credential Access

Adversaries may attempt to access credential material stored in the process memory of the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS).

attack.mitre.org →

T1003.002 Security Account Manager Credential Access

Adversaries may attempt to extract credential material from the Security Account Manager (SAM) database either through in-memory techniques or through the Windows Registry where the SAM database is stored.

attack.mitre.org →

T1003.004 LSA Secrets Credential Access

Adversaries with SYSTEM access to a host may attempt to access Local Security Authority (LSA) secrets, which can contain a variety of different credential materials, such as credentials for service accounts.

attack.mitre.org →

T1003.006 DCSync Credential Access

Adversaries may attempt to access credentials and other sensitive information by abusing a Windows Domain Controller's application programming interface (API)(Citation: Microsoft DRSR Dec 2017) (Citation: Microsoft GetNCCChanges) (Citati…

attack.mitre.org →

Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-30087Same vendor: Cesanta

CVE-2023-43338Same vendor: Cesanta

CVE-2026-46520Shared CWE-122, CWE-787

CVE-2024-39518Shared CWE-122, CWE-787

CVE-2025-27177Shared CWE-122, CWE-787

CVE-2023-4692Shared CWE-122, CWE-787

CVE-2026-40691Shared CWE-122, CWE-787

CVE-2026-12844Shared CWE-122, CWE-787

CVE-2024-4559Shared CWE-122, CWE-787

CVE-2023-1906Shared CWE-122, CWE-787

Affected Assets

cesanta

mongoose

7.10

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent

Stop it (NIST 800-53)

—

Detect

Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

—

Harden

Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

—

Validate

Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

V1.4.1

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

SI-16 Memory Protection

addresses: CWE-787

Out-of-bounds writes that corrupt control flow or inject shellcode are rendered non-executable by the same memory protections.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

ID.RA-01 partial match

blocks

Vulnerability scanning and recording can discover heap-overflow flaws but does not prevent their introduction in code.

PR.PS-02 partial match

blocks

Timely patching removes known heap-overflow instances after they exist.

PR.PS-06 partial match

blocks

Secure-development practices directly require bounds checking and safe memory handling that prevent heap overflows.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

A.5.14 Information transfer partial match

removes

A.5.15 Access control partial match

removes

A.5.16 Identity management partial match

removes

A.5.17 Authentication information partial match

removes

A.5.18 Access rights partial match

removes

A.7.2 Physical entry partial match

removes