CVE-2025-43880 in GROWI
Summary
by MITRE • 06/25/2025
Inefficient regular expression complexity issue exists in GROWI prior to v7.1.6. If exploited, a logged-in user may cause a denial of service (DoS) condition.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/25/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-43880 represents a critical security flaw in GROWI versions prior to v7.1.6, specifically targeting the application's handling of regular expressions within its input validation mechanisms. This issue stems from an inefficient regular expression complexity that can be exploited by authenticated users to trigger a denial of service condition. The vulnerability exists in the core parsing and validation logic where the application processes user-supplied input through regular expression patterns, creating a potential attack vector that can be leveraged to disrupt normal service operations.
The technical flaw manifests when a maliciously crafted input is submitted by a logged-in user, which causes the regular expression engine to consume excessive computational resources during pattern matching operations. This occurs due to poorly constructed regular expressions that exhibit exponential time complexity under certain input conditions, allowing an attacker to craft inputs that cause the regular expression engine to perform an enormous number of operations. The vulnerability is classified as a weakness in the input validation and sanitization processes, aligning with CWE-1321 which specifically addresses inefficient regular expression complexity issues. The attack vector requires only authentication, making it particularly dangerous as it can be exploited by users with legitimate access to the system.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability poses significant risks to system availability and service integrity. When exploited, the denial of service condition can affect multiple users simultaneously, potentially causing widespread disruption to collaborative work environments that rely on GROWI's document management and sharing capabilities. The resource exhaustion occurs at the application level, consuming cpu cycles and memory resources to the point where legitimate requests cannot be processed effectively. This type of attack aligns with ATT&CK technique T1499.004 which covers network denial of service attacks, and can be particularly damaging in enterprise environments where GROWI serves as a critical collaboration platform. The DoS condition can persist until the affected processes are manually restarted or the system is rebooted, creating extended periods of service unavailability.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability should prioritize the immediate upgrade to GROWI version 7.1.6 or later, which includes the patched regular expression implementations. Organizations should also implement additional monitoring and rate-limiting measures to detect and prevent exploitation attempts, particularly by monitoring for unusual processing patterns that may indicate regular expression denial of service attacks. Input validation should be enhanced to include more robust sanitization of user-supplied data before it is processed through regular expression engines. Security teams should consider implementing automated scanning tools to identify potentially vulnerable regular expression patterns within their own applications and develop secure coding practices that avoid the use of regular expressions with exponential complexity. Network-level protections such as intrusion detection systems can also help detect and block exploitation attempts by monitoring for patterns associated with regular expression denial of service attacks.