CVE-2009-5031

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.3 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2012-07-22 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-79

Description

ModSecurity before 2.5.11 treats request parameter values containing single quotes as files, which allows remote attackers to bypass filtering rules and perform other attacks such as cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks via a single quote in a request parameter in the Content-Disposition field of a request with a multipart/form-data Content-Type header.

Affected products

Opensuse: 11.4, 12.2, 12.3
Trustwave Modsecurity: before 2.5.11 — fixed in 2.5.11

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Trustwave Modsecurity 2.5.11. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://blog.ivanristic.com/2012/06/modsecurity-and-modsecurity-core-rule-set-multipart-bypasses.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2013-08/msg00020.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2013-08/msg00025.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2013-08/msg00031.html
http://mod-security.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mod-security/m2/branches/2.6.x/CHANGES
http://secunia.com/advisories/49576
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/06/22/1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/06/22/2
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/54156
http://www.suspekt.org/downloads/POC2009-ShockingNewsInPHPExploitation.pdf
https://www.modsecurity.org/fisheye/browse/modsecurity/m2/branches/2.5.x/apache2/msc_multipart.c?r2=1419&r1=1366
http://blog.ivanristic.com/2012/06/modsecurity-and-modsecurity-core-rule-set-multipart-bypasses.html

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