CVE-2023-28837 — Wagtail is an open source content management system built on Django

Wagtail is an open source content management system built on Django. Prior to versions 4.1.4 and 4.2.2, a memory exhaustion bug exists in Wagtail's handling of uploaded images and documents. For both images and documents, files are loaded into memory during upload for additi

01What is this vulnerability?

Wagtail is an open source content management system built on Django. Prior to versions 4.1.4 and 4.2.2, a memory exhaustion bug exists in Wagtail's handling of uploaded images and documents. For both images and documents, files are loaded into memory during upload for additional processing. A user with access to upload images or documents through the Wagtail admin interface could upload a file so…

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
wagtail	wagtail	< 4.1.4, >= 4.2, < 4.2.2

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-04-03T16:41:19.467Z
• Last modified: 2025-02-11T14:37:06.278Z

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/security/advisories/GHSA-33pv-vcgh-jfg9
• github.com — https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/commit/3c0c64642b9e5b8d28b111263c7f4bddad6c38…
• github.com — https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/commit/c9d2fcd650a88d76ae122646142245e5927a91…
• github.com — https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/commit/cfa11bbe00dbe7ce8cd4c0bbfe2a898a690df2…
• github.com — https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/commit/d4022310cbe497993459c3136311467c7ac632…
• docs.wagtail.org — https://docs.wagtail.org/en/stable/reference/settings.html#wagtailimages-max-upl…
• github.com — https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/releases/tag/v4.1.4
• github.com — https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/releases/tag/v4.2.2