Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-30160

RCE in Redlib ≤ 0.36.0

Published
20 March 2025
Modified
03 February 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 8.7
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
EPSS Score 0.0053 42th percentile
Risk Priority 45 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-30160 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) vulnerability in Redlib Redlib. Its CVSS base score is 8.7 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique OS Exhaustion Flood (T1499.001); ranked at the 42th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary

Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.

CVE-2025-30160 affects Redlib, an alternative private front-end to Reddit. The vulnerability enables an attacker to trigger a denial-of-service (DoS) condition by submitting a specially crafted base2048-encoded DEFLATE decompression bomb to the restore_preferences form. This results in excessive memory consumption and potential system instability, disrupting Redlib instances. It is associated with CWEs-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption) and CWE-502 (Deserialization of Untrusted Data) and has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H). The issue is fixed in Redlib version 0.36.0.

Any unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability with low attack complexity and no user interaction required. By sending the malicious payload to the restore_preferences form, the attacker causes the decompression process to consume excessive resources, leading to DoS on the targeted Redlib instance without affecting confidentiality or integrity.

Mitigation is available through upgrading to Redlib 0.36.0 or later, as detailed in the GitHub security advisory GHSA-g8vq-v3mg-7mrg and the fixing commits 15147cea8e42f6569a11603d661d71122f6a02dc and 2e95e1fc6e2064ccfae87964b4860bda55eddb9a. Security practitioners should review these resources for implementation details and verify deployments prior to version 0.36.0.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Redlib is an alternative private front-end to Reddit. A vulnerability has been identified in Redlib where an attacker can cause a denial-of-service (DOS) condition by submitting a specially crafted base2048-encoded DEFLATE decompression bomb to the restore_preferences form. This leads to…

more

excessive memory consumption and potential system instability, which can be exploited to disrupt Redlib instances. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.36.0.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499.001 OS Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may launch a denial of service (DoS) attack targeting an endpoint's operating system (OS).
T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution Execution
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in client applications to execute code.
T1498 Network Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Network Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of targeted resources to users.
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.
T1499.002 Service Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target the different network services provided by systems to conduct a denial of service (DoS).
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-32665Shared CWE-400, CWE-502
CVE-2026-21619Shared CWE-400, CWE-502
CVE-2023-32636Shared CWE-400, CWE-502
CVE-2025-67779Shared CWE-400, CWE-502
CVE-2026-23864Shared CWE-400, CWE-502
CVE-2026-23869Shared CWE-400, CWE-502
CVE-2024-21526Shared CWE-400
CVE-2024-21523Shared CWE-400
CVE-2021-44228Shared CWE-400, CWE-502
CVE-2023-21557Shared CWE-400

Affected Assets

redlib
redlib
≤ 0.36.0

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation can uncover deserialization flaws before deployment.

SC-5 directly limits the effects of resource-exhaustion events that constitute uncontrolled consumption.

SC-6 enforces explicit allocation limits on resources, structurally preventing the weakness from occurring.

Input validation directly stops deserialization of untrusted data by ensuring inputs are valid before processing.

Engineering principles such as safe deserialization and input sanitization structurally prevent the weakness from being introduced.

Process isolation confines resource consumption to separate domains, reducing blast radius without stopping the root flaw.

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.IR-04 mostly match
prevents

Explicitly requires monitoring and maintaining resource capacity, directly addressing uncontrolled consumption to preserve availability.

DE.CM-09 partial match
prevents

Continuous monitoring of computing resources can detect resource exhaustion but does not itself enforce allocation limits.

PR.IR-03 partial match
prevents

Resilience mechanisms such as avoiding single points of failure indirectly reduce impact of resource exhaustion.

PR.PS-01 partial match
prevents

Hardened configuration baselines can include resource quotas and limits that constrain consumption.

PR.PS-02 none match
prevents

PR.PS-02 addresses only post-deployment updates/patching and cannot prevent introduction of unsafe deserialization code, yet it can remediate some instances when the flaw exists in outdated libraries or components.

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

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

finds

Security testing includes validation of deserialization routines and the use of untrusted data, reducing the likelihood that unsafe object reconstruction will be deployed.

prevents

By continuously monitoring utilization, stress-testing peak loads, and maintaining documented plans to scale or throttle resources, the control directly limits an attacker’s ability to drive a system into uncontrolled resource exhaustion.

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.

mitigates

Business-continuity plans that include resource-management controls reduce the likelihood that an attacker can trigger uncontrolled resource consumption by forcing the system into a degraded or fallback state.

mitigates

Defining RTOs and capacity requirements for ICT services during business-impact analysis forces organizations to provision sufficient resources and throttling mechanisms, reducing the likelihood that an attacker can induce denial-of-service through uncontrolled resource consumption.

References