CVE-2025-46556 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in mantisbt/mantisbt. A fix is available for mantisbt/mantisbt — see the affected versions and patch details below.
MantisBT is Vulnerable to Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack via Excessive Note Length
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-2025-46556.
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-2025-46556 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 377,333 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
mantisbt/mantisbtReal-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
Mantis Bug Tracker (MantisBT) is an open source issue tracker. Versions 2.27.1 and below allow attackers to permanently corrupt issue activity logs by submitting extremely long notes (tested with 4,788,761 characters) due to a lack of server-side validation of note length. Once such a note is added, the activity stream UI fails to render; therefore, new notes cannot be displayed, effectively breaking all future collaboration on the issue. This issue is fixed in version 2.27.2.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | mantisbt/mantisbt | all versions | 2.27.2composer require mantisbt/mantisbt:^2.27.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for mantisbt/mantisbt, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update mantisbt/mantisbt to 2.27.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-46556 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-2025-46556 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-46556. 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-2025-46556 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-46556 across Packagist dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.