CVE-2019-11287
HIGHCVE-2019-11287 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in RabbitMQ. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2019-11287 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Pivotal RabbitMQ is vulnerable to a denial of service attack
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2019-11287 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 0 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
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 | 3.7.21 |
| 💧Hex | RabbitMQ | ≥ 3.8.0&&< 3.8.1 | 3.8.1 |
| 💧Hex | RabbitMQ | all versions | 1.16.7 |
| 💧Hex | RabbitMQ | ≥ 1.17.0&&< 1.17.4 | 1.17.4 |
Research 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. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
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
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2019-11287 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2019-11287. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2019-11287 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2019-11287 across Hex dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.