VIR Vulnerability Intelligence Relay

CVE-2017-9798

high
Published 2017-09-18 · Modified 2026-05-13
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CVSS v3
7.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS v4 NEW
—
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
8.5

Description

Apache httpd allows remote attackers to read secret data from process memory if the Limit directive can be set in a user's .htaccess file, or if httpd.conf has certain misconfigurations, aka Optionsbleed. This affects the Apache HTTP Server through 2.2.34 and 2.4.x through 2.4.27. The attacker sends an unauthenticated OPTIONS HTTP request when attempting to read secret data. This is a use-after-free issue and thus secret data is not always sent, and the specific data depends on many factors including configuration. Exploitation with .htaccess can be blocked with a patch to the ap_limit_section function in server/core.c.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
83%
Patch ETA
—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Metasploit modules

auxiliary_scanner/http/apache_optionsbleed rank 300
Apache Optionsbleed Scanner
Source fetch failed: fetch_error — view the original via the link above.

OS impact
OSVersionStatusFixed in
debian debianbullseyefixed2.4.27-6
debian debianbookwormfixed2.4.27-6
debian debianforkyfixed2.4.27-6
debian debiansidfixed2.4.27-6
debian debiantrixiefixed2.4.27-6
arch archfixed2.4.27-2
suse slesaffected
debian debian7.0affected
debian debian8.0affected
debian debian9.0affected

Application impact
VendorProductVersionsFixed
apache apachehttp_server{"endIncluding":"2.2.34"}
apache apachehttp_server2.4.0
apache apachehttp_server2.4.1
apache apachehttp_server2.4.2
apache apachehttp_server2.4.3
apache apachehttp_server2.4.4
apache apachehttp_server2.4.6
apache apachehttp_server2.4.7
apache apachehttp_server2.4.9
apache apachehttp_server2.4.10
apache apachehttp_server2.4.12
apache apachehttp_server2.4.16
apache apachehttp_server2.4.17
apache apachehttp_server2.4.18
apache apachehttp_server2.4.20
apache apachehttp_server2.4.23
apache apachehttp_server2.4.25
apache apachehttp_server2.4.26
apache apachehttp_server2.4.27

References

CWEs

CWE-416

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.