Cyber Resilience

CVE-2023-45813

Validators Project Validators 0.11.0 … 0.20.0

Public PoC
Published
18 October 2023
Modified
21 November 2024
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 4.6
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0080 53th percentile
Risk Priority 38 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2023-45813 is a medium-severity Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity (CWE-1333) vulnerability in Validators Project Validators. Its CVSS base score is 4.6 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked in the top 47% 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

Vulnerability Data

Torbot is an open source tor network intelligence tool. In affected versions the `torbot.modules.validators.validate_link function` uses the python-validators URL validation regex. This particular regular expression has an exponential complexity which allows an attacker to cause an application crash using a…

more

well-crafted argument. An attacker can use a well-crafted URL argument to exploit the vulnerability in the regular expression and cause a Denial of Service on the system. The validators file has been removed in version 4.0.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.003 Application Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-6688Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2026-57584Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2025-2937Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2025-27220Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2023-25167Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2026-4923Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2024-45338Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2025-70030Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2026-16270Shared CWE-1333
CVE-2025-70034Shared CWE-1333

Affected Assets

torbot project
torbot
≤ 4.0.0
validators project
validators
0.11.0, 0.20.0

Mitigating Controls

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.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly prevent inefficient regex via reviews, static analysis, and safe libraries.

ID.RA-01 partial match
prevents

Vulnerability identification processes can discover ReDoS issues in existing code but do not stop their introduction.

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

Security testing can detect and reject regex patterns with exponential worst-case complexity.

prevents

Secure development lifecycle mandates review of algorithmic efficiency, directly addressing ReDoS-prone regex.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify input-validation rules that limit regex complexity.

prevents

Secure architecture principles encourage avoidance of computationally expensive constructs such as catastrophic backtracking.

prevents

Secure coding standards explicitly prohibit or limit the use of inefficient regular expressions.

References