Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-30923

Memory Safety in Owasp Modsecurity ≤ 3.0.15

Public PoCMemory Safety
Published
05 May 2026
Modified
25 July 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 8.2
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/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 0.0043 36th percentile
Risk Priority 43 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-30923 is a high-severity Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125) vulnerability in Owasp Modsecurity. Its CVSS base score is 8.2 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 36th 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 SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-8 (Security and Privacy Engineering Principles) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx. Libmodsecurity is one component of the ModSecurity v3 project. A segmentation fault occurs when a rule using the t:hexDecode transformation inspects a query…

more

string parameter containing a single character. An attacker can exploit this to crash worker processes, causing a denial of service. Service resumes once the attack stops as worker processes recover from the segfault. All versions before 3.0.15 of libModSecurity3 are affected. This has been patched in version 3.0.15.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.
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.
T1210 Exploitation of Remote Services Lateral Movement
Adversaries may exploit remote services to gain unauthorized access to internal systems once inside of a network.
T1211 Exploitation for Stealth Stealth
Adversaries may exploit vulnerabilities to evade detection by hiding activity, suppressing logging, or operating within trusted or unmonitored components.
T1212 Exploitation for Credential Access Credential Access
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to collect credentials.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-52761Same product: Owasp Modsecurity
CVE-2026-42268Same product: Owasp Modsecurity
CVE-2024-1019Same product: Owasp Modsecurity
CVE-2025-54571Same product: Owasp Modsecurity
CVE-2026-52747Same product: Owasp Modsecurity
CVE-2023-38285Same product: Owasp Modsecurity
CVE-2023-28882Same product: Owasp Modsecurity
CVE-2025-48866Same product: Owasp Modsecurity
CVE-2023-38199Same vendor: Owasp
CVE-2026-3816Same vendor: Owasp

Affected Assets

owasp
modsecurity
≤ 3.0.15

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation directly finds out-of-bounds read flaws through static analysis, fuzzing, and dynamic bounds checks.

Secure engineering principles require bounds checking and memory-safe constructs that stop out-of-bounds reads from being introduced.

Process isolation confines the effects of an out-of-bounds read to the compromised process.

Input validation rejects malformed indices or lengths that would otherwise cause reads outside buffer bounds.

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-development practices such as bounds checking and memory-safe languages directly prevent out-of-bounds reads.

ID.RA-01 partial match
prevents

Vulnerability scanning and recording can discover instances of out-of-bounds reads after code is deployed.

PR.PS-02 partial match
prevents

Routine patching replaces vulnerable code containing out-of-bounds read flaws.

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 in development and acceptance includes fuzzing and static analysis that detect out-of-bounds read defects before release.

A.8.15 Logging partial match
finds

Logging can record evidence of an out-of-bounds read but does not prevent the weakness itself.

prevents

Secure development life cycle mandates input validation and bounds checking that directly prevent out-of-bounds reads.

prevents

Application security requirements include explicit bounds and memory-safety specifications that mitigate buffer over-reads.

prevents

Secure system architecture and engineering principles require memory-safe design patterns and runtime protections against out-of-bounds access.

prevents

Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe pointer arithmetic and mandate bounds-checked reads, eliminating CWE-125.

References