Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HSummary
CVE-2025-21503 is a medium-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Oracle Mysql Server. Its CVSS base score is 4.9 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 39% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) and SC-6 (Resource Availability) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-2492
Vulnerability Data
Vulnerability in the MySQL Server product of Oracle MySQL (component: InnoDB). Supported versions that are affected are 8.0.40 and prior, 8.4.3 and prior and 9.1.0 and prior. Easily exploitable vulnerability allows high privileged attacker with network access via multiple protocols…
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to compromise MySQL Server. Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized ability to cause a hang or frequently repeatable crash (complete DOS) of MySQL Server. CVSS 3.1 Base Score 4.9 (Availability impacts). CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly requires protection against or limiting of DoS attacks that exhaust availability, matching the InnoDB resource-exhaustion crash in CVE-2025-21503.
Mandates allocation of resources by quota or safeguards to protect availability, directly countering the CWE-770 unbounded allocation that enables the MySQL hang/crash.
Restricts privileges to the minimum required, reducing the attack surface for the high-privileged network attacker described in the CVE.
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.
Monitoring capacity and taking action to maintain availability directly reduces unchecked resource allocation.
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.
Baseline comparison of CPU, memory and bandwidth usage helps surface uncontrolled resource allocations before they cause service degradation.
Capacity projections and elasticity measures ensure that allocation requests are bounded and can be throttled, reducing the window in which an attacker can force unbounded resource reservations.
Defining retention periods and deletion schedules for backup copies prevents indefinite accumulation of data on storage media without corresponding resource-management controls.
Architectural redundancy and automatic failover limit the impact of an attacker who forces excessive allocations, because spare capacity can absorb the load until the primary instance recovers.
Documented incident response procedures that include activation of continuity plans and controlled recovery help ensure that resource consumption triggered by an incident is bounded and managed rather than left unbounded.
Mandating tested continuity procedures that preserve or replace resource-limiting controls prevents an attacker from exploiting the absence of throttling mechanisms during an outage.