Service interruption via User-Agent regex backtracking
Published Jun 1, 2022 · Updated Apr 23, 2025
Regular expression denial of service in affected BigBlueButton releases allows remote attackers to interrupt bbb-html5 through a User-Agent header. The /html5client/useragent handler passes the header to lookupUserAgent(), whose regex matching consumes excessive processing on a crafted SmartWatch value. No authentication or user interaction is required, and the demonstrated consequence is interruption of the bbb-html5 service rather than data access or modification.
Summary
What happened
Regular expression denial of service in affected BigBlueButton releases allows remote attackers to interrupt bbb-html5 through a User-Agent header. The /html5client/useragent handler passes the header to lookupUserAgent(), whose regex matching consumes excessive processing on a crafted SmartWatch value. No authentication or user interaction is required, and the demonstrated consequence is interruption of the bbb-html5 service rather than data access or modification.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2022-29169
- Published
- Jun 1, 2022
- Updated
- Apr 23, 2025
- Vendor
- BigBlueButton Inc.
- Product
- BigBlueButton
- Classifications
- CWE-1333, CWE-20, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Jun 1, 2022CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Apr 23, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=>= 2.2, < 2.3.19
- Affected versionversion=>= 2.4.0, < 2.4.7
- Affected versionversion=>= 2.5-alpha-1, < 2.5.0-beta.2
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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