CVE-2023-46118
MEDIUMCVE-2023-46118 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.9) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in rabbit_common. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2023-46118 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Denial of Service by publishing large messages over the HTTP API
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-2023-46118 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
rabbit_common💧rabbit_commonReal-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
RabbitMQ is a multi-protocol messaging and streaming broker. HTTP API did not enforce an HTTP request body limit, making it vulnerable for denial of service (DoS) attacks with very large messages. An authenticated user with sufficient credentials can publish a very large messages over the HTTP API and cause target node to be terminated by an "out-of-memory killer"-like mechanism. This vulnerability has been patched in versions 3.11.24 and 3.12.7.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💧Hex | rabbit_common | ≥ 3.12.0&&< 3.12.7 | 3.12.7 |
| 💧Hex | rabbit_common | ≥ 3.11.0&&< 3.11.24 | 3.11.24 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for rabbit_common. 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 rabbit_common to 3.12.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-46118 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-2023-46118 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-2023-46118. 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-46118 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2023-46118 across Hex dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.