CVE-2021-36395 — moodle
HIGHCVE-2021-36395 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in moodle/moodle. A fix is available for moodle/moodle — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Moodle vulnerable to Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2021-36395.
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
moodle/moodle🐘moodle/moodle🐘moodle/moodleReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
In Moodle, the file repository's URL parsing required additional recursion handling to mitigate the risk of recursion denial of service.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | moodle/moodle | ≥ 3.11.0-beta&&< 3.11.1 | 3.11.1composer require moodle/moodle:^3.11.1 |
| 🐘Packagist | moodle/moodle | ≥ 3.10.0-beta&&< 3.10.5 | 3.10.5composer require moodle/moodle:^3.10.5 |
| 🐘Packagist | moodle/moodle | all versions | 3.9.8composer require moodle/moodle:^3.9.8 |
Affected Products
moodlemoodleDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for moodle/moodle, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update moodle/moodle to 3.11.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-36395 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-36395 in your dependencies?
Find it across Packagist, including transitive dependencies.