# CVE-2024-37284: Elastic Defend Improper Handling of Alternate Encoding Leads to Crash

> Attackers can crash Elastic Defend on Windows by providing multibyte encoded files, preventing security actions like quarantine or process termination.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** A user has to click or open something
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 21 Jan 2025
- **Updated:** 21 Jan 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-23cq-gcvc-5552

## What is CVE-2024-37284?

CVE-2024-37284 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Elastic Defend, published on 21 Jan 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

### Official description

Improper handling of alternate encoding occurs when Elastic Defend on Windows systems attempts to scan a file or process encoded as a multibyte character. This leads to an uncaught exception causing Elastic Defend to crash which in turn will prevent it from quarantining the file and/or killing the process.

Weakness: CWE-755 (Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-37284?


## How do I fix CVE-2024-37284?

No fix has been published for CVE-2024-37284 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2024-37284 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-37284 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2024-37284 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2024-37284 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Elastic Defend, published on 21 Jan 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-37284 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Elastic Defend. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-37284/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-37284/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-37284
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-37284
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2024-37284

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-37284/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.