CVE-2025-31990 in DevOps Velocity
Summary
by MITRE • 02/07/2026
Rate limiting for certain API calls is not being enforced, making HCL Velocity vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. An attacker could flood the system with a large number of requests, overwhelming its resources and causing it to become unresponsive to legitimate users. This vulnerability is fixed in 5.1.7.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/08/2026
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-31990 represents a critical weakness in HCL Velocity's API security architecture that directly enables denial of service attacks through improper rate limiting implementation. This flaw exists within the system's access control mechanisms, where specific API endpoints fail to enforce appropriate request rate restrictions that would normally prevent excessive usage patterns from overwhelming system resources. The absence of effective rate limiting creates an exploitable condition that allows malicious actors to flood the system with excessive requests, potentially leading to complete service unavailability for legitimate users. The vulnerability specifically targets certain API calls that should be protected through established rate limiting controls, making it particularly dangerous as it undermines fundamental security measures designed to protect system availability and performance.
From a technical perspective, this vulnerability manifests as a failure in the system's request handling and resource management protocols, where the application fails to track or restrict the frequency of API calls from individual clients or IP addresses. The flaw enables attackers to perform rapid successive requests without proper throttling, consuming system resources such as CPU cycles, memory, and network bandwidth at unsustainable rates. This behavior directly violates established security principles and can be categorized under CWE-770, which addresses allocation of resources without proper limits or throttling mechanisms. The vulnerability's impact is amplified by the fact that it affects core API functionality, making it a prime target for automated attack tools that can quickly generate massive request volumes to overwhelm system capacity.
The operational implications of CVE-2025-31990 extend beyond simple service disruption to encompass broader security and business continuity concerns. When exploited, this vulnerability can cause cascading failures throughout the system, potentially leading to complete service outages that affect legitimate users and business operations. The attack surface is particularly concerning as it allows for relatively simple exploitation using standard tools or scripts that can generate high volumes of requests without requiring advanced technical skills or significant resources. Organizations utilizing HCL Velocity may experience degraded performance, increased latency, and complete service unavailability during sustained attack periods. The vulnerability's presence also creates opportunities for attackers to use the system as a launching point for more sophisticated attacks, as the compromised availability can mask other security issues or provide cover for additional malicious activities.
Security professionals should consider this vulnerability in relation to ATT&CK framework tactic TA0043, which covers resource exhaustion techniques that can be used to deny service to legitimate users. The vulnerability represents a classic example of how inadequate access control and rate limiting can create exploitable conditions that enable attackers to leverage system resources against themselves. Mitigation efforts should focus on implementing proper rate limiting controls that enforce maximum request rates per client or IP address, combined with monitoring and alerting systems that can detect unusual request patterns. Organizations should also consider implementing additional protections such as request queuing, circuit breaker patterns, and adaptive rate limiting that can dynamically adjust based on system load conditions. The fix provided in version 5.1.7 addresses the core issue by properly implementing rate limiting controls for the affected API calls, ensuring that system resources remain available for legitimate users while preventing abuse through excessive request volumes.
The vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of proper API security design and implementation, where basic access control measures like rate limiting can prevent entire classes of attacks from succeeding. Organizations should conduct comprehensive security assessments to identify similar rate limiting gaps in their API implementations, as this vulnerability likely represents a broader pattern of insufficient resource protection mechanisms. The fix implementation should include thorough testing to ensure that rate limiting controls do not inadvertently impact legitimate user workflows while providing adequate protection against malicious request flooding. Security teams must also establish ongoing monitoring procedures to detect potential abuse patterns and ensure that rate limiting configurations remain effective against evolving attack techniques that may attempt to circumvent implemented protections.