Summary
Workarounds
Site owners who are unable to upgrade to a patched version can limit the length of search terms passed to parse_query_string. Whilst the performance characteristics will depend on your hosting environment, 1000 characters has been shown to still be fairly fast, without triggering this vulnerability.
No workaround is available for the Wagtail admin usage.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Jake Howard for reporting this issue.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
- Visit Wagtail's support channels
- Email us at [email protected] (view our security policy for more information).
Impact
A bug in Wagtail's parse_query_string would result in it taking a long time to process suitably crafted inputs. When used to parse sufficiently long strings of characters without a space, parse_query_string would take an unexpectedly large amount of time to process, resulting in a denial of service.
In an initial Wagtail installation, the vulnerability can be exploited by any Wagtail admin user. It cannot be exploited by end users. If your Wagtail site has a custom search implementation which uses parse_query_string, it may be exploitable by other users (e.g. unauthenticated users).
A regular expression with worst-case exponential or polynomial matching time is applied to untrusted input, causing excessive CPU use. Typical impact: denial of service when input is crafted to trigger backtracking.
CVE-2024-39317 has a CVSS score of 6.5 (High). The vector is network-reachable, low privileges required, and no user interaction. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (6.0.6, 6.1.3, 5.2.6); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
Remediation advice
Patched versions have been released as Wagtail 5.2.6, 6.0.6 and 6.1.3.
This vulnerability affects all unpatched versions from Wagtail 2.0 onwards.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2024-39317? CVE-2024-39317 is a high-severity inefficient regular expression (ReDoS) vulnerability in wagtail (pip), affecting versions >= 6.0, < 6.0.6. It is fixed in 6.0.6, 6.1.3, 5.2.6. A regular expression with worst-case exponential or polynomial matching time is applied to untrusted input, causing excessive CPU use.
- How severe is CVE-2024-39317? CVE-2024-39317 has a CVSS score of 6.5 (High). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
- Which versions of wagtail are affected by CVE-2024-39317? wagtail (pip) versions >= 6.0, < 6.0.6 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2024-39317? Yes. CVE-2024-39317 is fixed in 6.0.6, 6.1.3, 5.2.6. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2024-39317 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2024-39317 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether CVE-2024-39317 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix CVE-2024-39317?
- Upgrade
wagtailto 6.0.6 or later - Upgrade
wagtailto 6.1.3 or later - Upgrade
wagtailto 5.2.6 or later
- Upgrade