Staging Environment: Content and features may be unstable or change without notice.
Advisory details: vulnrichment / CVE-2025-59152
Advisory ID vulnrichment/CVE-2025-59152
Aliases
Summary Litestar is an Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface (ASGI) framework. In version 2.17.0, rate limits can be completely bypassed by manipulating the X-Forwarded-For header. This renders IP-based rate limiting ineffective against determined attackers. Litestar's RateLimitMiddleware uses `cache_key_from_request()` to generate cache keys for rate limiting. When an X-Forwarded-For header is present, the middleware trusts it unconditionally and uses its value as part of the client identifier. Since clients can set arbitrary X-Forwarded-For values, each different spoofed IP creates a separate rate limit bucket. An attacker can rotate through different header values to avoid hitting any single bucket's limit. This affects any Litestar application using RateLimitMiddleware with default settings, which likely includes most applications that implement rate limiting. Version 2.18.0 contains a patch for the vulnerability.
Status Published
Exploitability 0.5
Weighted Severity 0.0
Risk
Affected and Fixed Packages Package Details
Introduced and Fixed Package Commit Patches Package Commit Patches Details
Weaknesses (1)
CWE-807 Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision
System Score Found at
cvssv3.1 7.5
ssvc Track
Reference id Reference type URL
https://github.com/litestar-org/litestar/blob/26f20ac6c52de2b4bf81161f7560c8bb4af6f382/litestar/middleware/rate_limit.py#L127
https://github.com/litestar-org/litestar/commit/42a89e043e50b515f8548a93954fe143f63cf9fb
GHSA-hm36-ffrh-c77c https://github.com/litestar-org/litestar/security/advisories/GHSA-hm36-ffrh-c77c
No exploits are available.

No EPSS data available for this advisory.

Patch URL
There are no known patches.
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Found at None
Attack Vector (AV) Attack Complexity (AC) Privileges Required (PR) User Interaction (UI) Scope (S) Confidentiality Impact (C) Integrity Impact (I) Availability Impact (A)

network

adjacent_network

local

physical

low

high

none

low

high

none

required

unchanged

changed

high

low

none

high

low

none

high

low

none
Vector: SSVCv2/E:P/A:Y/T:P/P:M/B:A/M:M/D:T/2025-10-06T15:35:23Z/ Found at None

Vector: SSVCv2/E:P/A:Y/T:P/P:M/B:A/M:M/D:T/2025-10-06T15:35:23Z/

Decision: Track

Source URL: https://github.com/cisagov/vulnrichment/blob/develop/2025/59xxx/CVE-2025-59152.json

Source Advisory: vulnrichment/CVE-2025-59152

View SSVC decision tree 
[{'Exploitation': 'poc'},
 {'Automatable': 'yes'},
 {'Technical Impact': 'partial'},
 {'Mission Prevalence': 'minimal'},
 {'Public Well-being Impact': 'material'},
 {'Mission & Well-being': 'medium'}]