Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-25480

Litestar ≤ 2.20.0

Public PoC
Published
09 February 2026
Modified
17 February 2026
Patch / advisory
View advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 6.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0041 34th percentile
Risk Priority 51 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-25480 is a medium-severity Improper Handling of Unicode Encoding (CWE-176) vulnerability in Litestar Litestar. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Invisible Unicode (T1027.018); ranked at the 34th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Litestar is an Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface (ASGI) framework. Prior to 2.20.0, FileStore maps cache keys to filenames using Unicode NFKD normalization and ord() substitution without separators, creating key collisions. When FileStore is used as response-cache backend, an unauthenticated remote…

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attacker can trigger cache key collisions via crafted paths, causing one URL to serve cached responses of another (cache poisoning/mixup). This vulnerability is fixed in 2.20.0.

CWE(s)
CWE-176

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1027.018 Invisible Unicode Stealth
Adversaries may abuse invisible or non-printing Unicode characters to conceal malicious content within files, scripts, or text.
attack.mitre.org →
T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information Stealth
Adversaries may attempt to make an executable or file difficult to discover or analyze by encrypting, encoding, or otherwise obfuscating its contents on the system or in transit.
attack.mitre.org →
T1132 Data Encoding Command And Control
Adversaries may encode data to make the content of command and control traffic more difficult to detect.
attack.mitre.org →
T1132.002 Non-Standard Encoding Command And Control
Adversaries may encode data with a non-standard data encoding system to make the content of command and control traffic more difficult to detect.
attack.mitre.org →
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.
attack.mitre.org →
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-25479Same product: Litestar Litestar
CVE-2024-52581Same product: Litestar Litestar
CVE-2026-25478Same product: Litestar Litestar
CVE-2025-71316Shared CWE-176
CVE-2026-4116Shared CWE-176
CVE-2026-44288Shared CWE-176
CVE-2024-8067Shared CWE-176
CVE-2024-43093Shared CWE-176
CVE-2026-20202Shared CWE-176
CVE-2026-35373Shared CWE-176

Affected Assets

litestar
litestar
≤ 2.20.0

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

SI-10 Information Input Validation good match

Input validation directly requires checking and normalizing encodings so that Unicode is handled consistently before further processing.

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 require proper Unicode/input validation to prevent this weakness.

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.

A.8.29 Security testing in development and acceptance mostly match
finds

Security testing can detect Unicode-handling flaws before deployment.

A.8.25 Secure development life cycle partial match
prevents

Secure development lifecycle mandates input validation and encoding handling that can prevent Unicode mishandling.

A.8.26 Application security requirements partial match
prevents

Application security requirements include proper handling of character encodings and input sanitization.

A.8.27 Secure system architecture and engineering principles partial match
prevents

Secure architecture principles require robust input processing to avoid encoding-related vulnerabilities.

A.8.28 Secure coding partial match
prevents

Secure coding standards directly address proper Unicode and character-encoding validation.

References