CVE-2023-37481 is a low-severity (CVSS 2.7) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ethyca-fides. A fix is available for ethyca-fides — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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
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
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 | 2.16.0pip install --upgrade 'ethyca-fides==2.16.0' |
Affected Products
fidesethycaDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for ethyca-fides, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
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
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-2023-37481 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.