CVE-2023-37481 is a low-severity (CVSS 2.7) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ethyca-fides. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2023-37481 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Fides Webserver Vulnerable to SVG Bomb File Uploads
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-2023-37481.
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-2023-37481 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 356,453 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
ethyca-fidesReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Fides is an open-source privacy engineering platform for managing data privacy requests and privacy regulations. The Fides webserver is vulnerable to a type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to upload zip files containing malicious SVG bombs (similar to a billion laughs attack), causing resource exhaustion in Admin UI browser tabs and creating a persistent denial of service of the 'new connector' page (datastore-connection/new). This vulnerability affects Fides versions 2.11.0 through 2.15.1. Exploitation is limited to users with elevated privileges with the CONNECTOR_TEMPLATE_REGISTER scope, which includes root users and users with the owner role. The vulnerability has been patched in Fides version 2.16.0. Users are advised to upgrade to this version or later to secure their systems against this threat. There is no known workaround to remediate this vulnerability without upgrading.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | ethyca-fides | ≥ 2.11.0&&< 2.16.0 | 2.16.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for ethyca-fides. 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 ethyca-fides to 2.16.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-37481 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-2023-37481 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-2023-37481. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-37481 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2023-37481 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.