CVE-2021-41115
Regular expression denial-of-service in Zulip
Zulip is an open source team chat server. In affected versions Zulip allows organization administrators on a server to configure "linkifiers" that automatically create links from messages that users send, detected via arbitrary regular expressions. Malicious organization administrators could subject the server to a denial-of-service via regular expression complexity attacks; most simply, by configuring a quadratic-time regular expression in a linkifier, and sending messages that exploited it. A regular expression attempted to parse the user-provided regexes to verify that they were safe from ReDoS -- this was both insufficient, as well as itself subject to ReDoS if the organization administrator entered a sufficiently complex invalid regex. Affected users should upgrade to the just-released Zulip 4.7, or main.
Attack profile
How easy it is to exploit
- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges needed
- Low
- User interaction
- None
What an attacker can affect
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Low
Exploit likelihood
What each source reports
CVE List Score used
4.3
Regular expression denial-of-service in Zulip
Zulip is an open source team chat server. In affected versions Zulip allows organization administrators on a server to configure "linkifiers" that automatically create links from messages that users send, detected via arbitrary regular expressions. Malicious organization administrators could subject the server to a denial-of-service via regular expression complexity attacks; most simply, by configuring a quadratic-time regular expression in a linkifier, and sending messages that exploited it. A regular expression attempted to parse the user-provided regexes to verify that they were safe from ReDoS -- this was both insufficient, as well as itself subject to ReDoS if the organization administrator entered a sufficiently complex invalid regex. Affected users should upgrade to the just-released Zulip 4.7, or main.
- Record
CVE-2021-41115- CVSS 3.1
- 4.3 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L - Weakness
- CWE-400, CWE-1333
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2021-28248
4.3
Zulip is an open source team chat server. In affected versions Zulip allows organization administrators on a server to configure "linkifiers" that automatically create links from messages that users send, detected via arbitrary regular expressions. Malicious organization administrators could subject the server to a denial-of-service via regular expression complexity attacks; most simply, by configuring a quadratic-time regular expression in a linkifier, and sending messages that exploited it. A regular expression attempted to parse the user-provided regexes to verify that they were safe from ReDoS -- this was both insufficient, as well as itself subject to ReDoS if the organization administrator entered a sufficiently complex invalid regex. Affected users should upgrade to the just-released Zulip 4.7, or main.
- Record
EUVD-2021-28248- CVSS 3.1
- 4.3 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L - Updated
- 2026-11-03
NVD
4.3
Zulip is an open source team chat server. In affected versions Zulip allows organization administrators on a server to configure "linkifiers" that automatically create links from messages that users send, detected via arbitrary regular expressions. Malicious organization administrators could subject the server to a denial-of-service via regular expression complexity attacks; most simply, by configuring a quadratic-time regular expression in a linkifier, and sending messages that exploited it. A regular expression attempted to parse the user-provided regexes to verify that they were safe from ReDoS -- this was both insufficient, as well as itself subject to ReDoS if the organization administrator entered a sufficiently complex invalid regex. Affected users should upgrade to the just-released Zulip 4.7, or main.
- Record
CVE-2021-41115- CVSS 3.1
- 4.3 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L - CVSS 3.1
- 6.5 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - CVSS 2.0
- 4.0 Medium
AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:P - Weakness
- CWE-400, CWE-1333
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSV
6.5
Zulip is an open source team chat server. In affected versions Zulip allows organization administrators on a server to configure "linkifiers" that automatically create links from messages that users send, detected via arbitrary regular expressions. Malicious organization administrators could subject the server to a denial-of-service via regular expression complexity attacks; most simply, by configuring a quadratic-time regular expression in a linkifier, and sending messages that exploited it. A regular expression attempted to parse the user-provided regexes to verify that they were safe from ReDoS -- this was both insufficient, as well as itself subject to ReDoS if the organization administrator entered a sufficiently complex invalid regex. Affected users should upgrade to the just-released Zulip 4.7, or main.
- Record
CVE-2021-41115- CVSS 3.1
- 6.5 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Updated
- 2026-11-02
Affected products
History
| Recorded | Changed | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| aliases | EUVD | |
| first indexed | CVE List, NVD, OSV |
Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.
In short
CVE-2021-41115 is a medium vulnerability (CVSS 4.3) in Zulip, published October 7, 2021. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 1.74%, the 77th percentile. No source names a fixed version.