CVE-2024-39317 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-1333 vulnerability in wagtail. A fix is available for wagtail — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Wagtail regular expression denial-of-service via search query parsing
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-2024-39317.
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-2024-39317 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 378,567 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
wagtail🐍wagtail🐍wagtailReal-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
Impact
A bug in Wagtail's parse_query_string would result in it taking a long time to process suitably crafted inputs. When used to parse sufficiently long strings of characters without a space, parse_query_string would take an unexpectedly large amount of time to process, resulting in a denial of service.
In an initial Wagtail installation, the vulnerability can be exploited by any Wagtail admin user. It cannot be exploited by end users. If your Wagtail site has a custom search implementation which uses parse_query_string, it may be exploitable by other users (e.g. unauthenticated users).
Patches
Patched versions have been released as Wagtail 5.2.6, 6.0.6 and 6.1.3.
This vulnerability affects all unpatched versions from Wagtail 2.0 onwards.
Workarounds
Site owners who are unable to upgrade to a patched version can limit the length of search terms passed to parse_query_string. Whilst the performance characteristics will depend on your hosting environment, 1000 characters has been shown to still be fairly fast, without triggering this vulnerability.
No workaround is available for the Wagtail admin usage.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Jake Howard for reporting this issue.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
- Visit Wagtail's support channels
- Email us at [email protected] (view our security policy for more information).
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | wagtail | ≥ 6.0&&< 6.0.6 | 6.0.6pip install --upgrade 'wagtail==6.0.6' |
| 🐍PyPI | wagtail | ≥ 6.1&&< 6.1.3 | 6.1.3pip install --upgrade 'wagtail==6.1.3' |
| 🐍PyPI | wagtail | ≥ 2.0&&< 5.2.6 | 5.2.6pip install --upgrade 'wagtail==5.2.6' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for wagtail, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update wagtail to 6.0.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-39317 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-39317 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-39317. 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-2024-39317 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-39317 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.