CVE-2023-45813 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in TorBot
An attacker can cause a Denial of Service in TorBot by submitting a specially crafted URL that triggers exponential complexity in a regular expression.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-45813?
CVE-2023-45813 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in DedSecInside TorBot, published on 18 Oct 2023. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Torbot is an open source tor network intelligence tool. In affected versions the `torbot.modules.validators.validate_link function` uses the python-validators URL validation regex. This particular regular expression has an exponential complexity which allows an attacker to cause an application crash using a well-crafted argument. An attacker can use a well-crafted URL argument to exploit the vulnerability in the regular expression and cause a Denial of Service on the system. The validators file has been removed in version 4.0.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Weakness: CWE-1333
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-45813?
3 open source packages ship an affected version, including torbot. It affects 2 products.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
torbot PyPI | All versions | 4.0.0 |
torbot PyPI | All versions | 4.0.0 |
torbot PyPI | All versions | 4.0.0 |
Products include Torbot Project Torbot, Validators Project Validators.
How do I fix CVE-2023-45813?
Upgrade torbot to 4.0.0 or later.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2023-45813 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2023-45813 exists.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-72qw-p7hh-m3ff, PYSEC-2026-1969.