ctfer-io chall-manager up to 0.1.3 Scenario Decoding amplification

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability identified as critical has been detected in ctfer-io chall-manager up to 0.1.3. The impacted element is an unknown function of the component Scenario Decoding. Performing a manipulation results in amplification. This vulnerability is cataloged as CVE-2025-53633. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. There is no exploit available. You should upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in ctfer-io chall-manager up to 0.1.3. It has been classified as critical. This affects some unknown functionality of the component Scenario Decoding. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a amplification vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-405. The product does not properly control situations in which an adversary can cause the product to consume or produce excessive resources without requiring the adversary to invest equivalent work or otherwise prove authorization, i.e., the adversary's influence is "asymmetric." This is going to have an impact on availability. The summary by CVE is:

Chall-Manager is a platform-agnostic system able to start Challenges on Demand of a player. When decoding a scenario (i.e. a zip archive), the size of the decoded content is not checked, potentially leading to zip bombs decompression. Exploitation does not require authentication nor authorization, so anyone can exploit it. It should nonetheless not be exploitable as it is highly recommended to bury Chall-Manager deep within the infrastructure due to its large capabilities, so no users could reach the system. Patch has been implemented by commit 14042aa and shipped in v0.1.4.

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2025-53633 since 07/07/2025. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. No form of authentication is needed for exploitation. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1499 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

Upgrading to version 0.1.4 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• ctfer-io

Name

• chall-manager

Version

• 0.1.0
• 0.1.1
• 0.1.2
• 0.1.3

Website

• Product: https://github.com/ctfer-io/chall-manager/

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