Security Resilience

CVE-2023-37481

DoS in Ethyca Fides 2.11.0 – 2.16.0

Published
18 July 2023
Modified
21 November 2024
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 2.7
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
EPSS Score 0.0070 52th percentile
Risk Priority 27 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-2023-37481 is a low-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) vulnerability in Ethyca Fides. Its CVSS base score is 2.7 (Low).

Operationally, ranked in the top 48% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Fides is an open-source privacy engineering platform for managing data privacy requests and privacy regulations. The Fides webserver is vulnerable to a type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to upload zip files containing malicious…

more

SVG bombs (similar to a billion laughs attack), causing resource exhaustion in Admin UI browser tabs and creating a persistent denial of service of the 'new connector' page (`datastore-connection/new`). This vulnerability affects Fides versions `2.11.0` through `2.15.1`. Exploitation is limited to users with elevated privileges with the `CONNECTOR_TEMPLATE_REGISTER` scope, which includes root users and users with the owner role. The vulnerability has been patched in Fides version `2.16.0`. Users are advised to upgrade to this version or later to secure their systems against this threat. There is no known workaround to remediate this vulnerability without upgrading.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-37480Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2023-46125Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2023-46124Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2025-57766Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2025-57817Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2024-38537Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2023-47114Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2024-31223Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2024-35189Same product: Ethyca Fides
CVE-2023-48224Same product: Ethyca Fides

Affected Assets

ethyca
fides
2.11.0 — 2.16.0

Mitigating Controls

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.

addresses: CWE-400

Limiting concurrent sessions directly prevents uncontrolled resource consumption by capping the number of active sessions per user or account.

addresses: CWE-400

Analysis identifies uncontrolled resource consumption indicative of denial-of-service or abuse attempts.

addresses: CWE-400

Contingency plan testing includes resource exhaustion scenarios to verify recovery, making it harder for attackers to sustain exploits that cause uncontrolled consumption.

addresses: CWE-400

Updated contingency plans include current procedures to detect, contain, and recover from resource exhaustion, limiting an attacker's ability to sustain impact from uncontrolled consumption.

addresses: CWE-400

Alternate site allows resumption of operations if resource exhaustion at the primary site is exploited to cause unavailability.

addresses: CWE-400

Alternate telecommunications services enable resumption of essential functions when primary services become unavailable due to uncontrolled resource consumption.

addresses: CWE-400

The team can analyze and respond to resource exhaustion incidents, reducing the impact of attacks that exploit uncontrolled consumption weaknesses.

addresses: CWE-400

Timely maintenance support and spare parts enable rapid recovery from failures induced by uncontrolled resource consumption, shortening the impact window of denial-of-service attacks.

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.

finds

Pre-agreed severity-based prioritization and resource allocation during incident triage reduce the likelihood that an attacker-induced resource exhaustion will overwhelm the organization before corrective action is taken.

finds

Early notification of anomalous resource consumption or system malfunctions enables throttling or isolation before availability is lost.

A.8.15 Logging partial match
finds

Specifying log storage limits and rotation procedures reduces the risk that unbounded log growth will exhaust disk or memory resources and cause denial of service.

finds

Resource-utilization monitoring and alerting on bottlenecks or overloads limits the impact of denial-of-service or resource-exhaustion attacks.

blocks

A.8.20 implements network-level protections (firewalls, segmentation, protocol hardening, monitoring, authentication of systems/devices) that can limit abuse of a resource-consuming weakness but do not stop the weakness from being exploitable; the flaw remains present in the product and can still be triggered from an authorized or internal context.

blocks

Monitoring network service usage and applying controls to restrict access when necessary limits an attacker’s ability to consume excessive resources through unrestricted or unauthenticated service calls.

Hardening callouts derived

DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.

  • No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-400, a class-level weakness. Rules are authored against its narrower children: CWE-770.

References