CVE-2025-53538
Published: 22 July 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-53538 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) vulnerability in Oisf Suricata. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Stealth (T1211); ranked in the top 37.9% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-22378
Vulnerability details
Suricata is a network IDS, IPS and NSM engine developed by the OISF (Open Information Security Foundation) and the Suricata community. In versions 7.0.10 and below and 8.0.0-beta1 through 8.0.0-rc1, mishandling of data on HTTP2 stream 0 can lead to…
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uncontrolled memory usage, leading to loss of visibility. Workarounds include disabling the HTTP/2 parser, and using a signature like drop http2 any any -> any any (frame:http2.hdr; byte_test:1,=,0,3; byte_test:4,=,0,5; sid: 1;) where the first byte test tests the HTTP2 frame type DATA and the second tests the stream id 0. This is fixed in versions 7.0.11 and 8.0.0.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Vulnerability enables remote exploitation of Suricata (security software) via HTTP/2 stream 0 mishandling, causing memory exhaustion, DoS, and loss of visibility; maps to exploitation for defense evasion (T1211), application exploitation for endpoint DoS (T1499.004), and disabling security tools (T1562.001).
Affected Assets
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.
Limiting concurrent sessions directly prevents uncontrolled resource consumption by capping the number of active sessions per user or account.
Contingency plan testing includes resource exhaustion scenarios to verify recovery, making it harder for attackers to sustain exploits that cause uncontrolled consumption.
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.
Alternate site allows resumption of operations if resource exhaustion at the primary site is exploited to cause unavailability.
Alternate telecommunications services enable resumption of essential functions when primary services become unavailable due to uncontrolled resource consumption.
Planning and coordination of security activities (scans, tests, maintenance) directly imposes scheduling and throttling that prevents those activities from producing uncontrolled resource consumption.
Performance metrics and monitoring inherently track resource consumption patterns, making uncontrolled consumption easier to detect and mitigate.
Terminating idle connections bounds resource consumption that would otherwise allow uncontrolled accumulation of open sessions.