CVE-2019-11287 — RabbitMQ
HIGHCVE-2019-11287 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in RabbitMQ. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for RabbitMQ — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Pivotal RabbitMQ is vulnerable to a denial of service attack
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
RabbitMQ💧RabbitMQ💧RabbitMQ💧RabbitMQReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Hex packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Pivotal RabbitMQ, versions 3.7.x prior to 3.7.21 and 3.8.x prior to 3.8.1, and RabbitMQ for Pivotal Platform, 1.16.x versions prior to 1.16.7 and 1.17.x versions prior to 1.17.4, contain a web management plugin that is vulnerable to a denial of service attack. The "X-Reason" HTTP Header can be leveraged to insert a malicious Erlang format string that will expand and consume the heap, resulting in the server crashing.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💧Hex | RabbitMQ | ≥ 3.7.0&&< 3.7.21 | 3.7.21mix deps.update RabbitMQ |
| 💧Hex | RabbitMQ | ≥ 3.8.0&&< 3.8.1 | 3.8.1mix deps.update RabbitMQ |
| 💧Hex | RabbitMQ | all versions | 1.16.7mix deps.update RabbitMQ |
| 💧Hex | RabbitMQ | ≥ 1.17.0&&< 1.17.4 | 1.17.4mix deps.update RabbitMQ |
Affected Products
rabbitmq serverbroadcomdebian linuxdebianfedorafedoraprojectrabbitmqpivotal_softwareopenstackredhatResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for RabbitMQ, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update RabbitMQ to 3.7.21 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2019-11287 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Red Hat Ansible Tower and Red Hat CloudForms are not vulnerable as they do not expose the RabbitMQ management interface by default. In Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13, the management interface was not enabled by default. So, although the flaw code was packaged, its impact for this version has been lowered to Moderate.
This flaw can be mitigated by disabling the Web Management plugin: rabbitmq-plugins disable rabbitmq_management.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2019-11287 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15.0 (Stein) | rabbitmq-server-0:3.7.22-1.el8ost | RHSA-2020:0078 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2019-11287 in your dependencies?
Find it across Hex, including transitive dependencies.