Regular expression denial-of-service in Zulip
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- Denial of service
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · None · High
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · NVD. Fix status from CNA. Impact type from CWE-1333.
Summary
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](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/upgrade-or-modify.html#upgrading-to-a-release), or [`main`](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/upgrade-or-modify.html#upgrading-from-a-git-repository).
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA zulip (zulip) Fixed in 4.7
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2021-41115
References
More Zulip vulnerabilities
- TI-2026-20810 Zulip: Anonymous File Access After Disabling Spectator Access CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 5.3
- TI-2026-21062 Zulip: Path Traversal in Import CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 6.1
- TI-2021-19605 RabbitMQ exposes ports with weak default secrets in Zulip Server CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2023-15953 Users who can send invitations can erroneously add users to streams during invitation in Zulip CVSS 3.1LOW 3.1
- TI-2022-13210 Zulip Server insufficient authorization for changing bot roles CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
- TI-2021-02864 Improper Access Control in zulip/zulip CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
Sources
This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences