Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
CVE-2022-28204 is a denial-of-service flaw in MediaWiki 1.37.x before 1.37.2. A specially costly Special:WhatLinksHere rendering path can consume more than 30 seconds, creating availability risk for public wiki infrastructure.
Executive priority
Prioritize remediation for public MediaWiki sites because the flaw affects availability and requires no authentication. Internal or non-1.37.x systems have lower urgency based on the provided evidence.
Technical view
The CVE describes uncontrolled resource consumption in MediaWiki 1.37.x before 1.37.2, mapped to CWE-400. CVSS 3.1 is 7.5: network-accessible, low complexity, no privileges, no user interaction, with high availability impact only.
Likely exposure
Exposure is most likely on internet-facing MediaWiki deployments running 1.37.x older than 1.37.2, especially sites allowing unauthenticated access to special pages.
Exploitation context
The source bundle does not show CISA KEV listing or cited evidence of active exploitation. The described risk is unauthenticated network denial of service through expensive page rendering, with DDoS potential.
Researcher notes
Evidence is limited to the CVE description and Wikimedia Phabricator reference. Treat affected scope as MediaWiki 1.37.x before 1.37.2 unless vendor records identify more detail.
Mitigation direction
- Upgrade affected MediaWiki 1.37.x systems to 1.37.2 or a vendor-supported later release.
- Check Wikimedia guidance for any temporary operational controls if immediate upgrade is not possible.
- Apply existing rate limiting or abuse controls to repeated expensive special-page requests.
- Monitor application latency and worker saturation during and after remediation.
Validation and detection
- Inventory MediaWiki instances and confirm exact deployed versions.
- Verify no internet-facing instance runs MediaWiki 1.37.x before 1.37.2.
- Review logs for repeated Special:WhatLinksHere requests and unusual long render times.
- Confirm post-upgrade responses no longer create sustained resource exhaustion.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CWE-400: Exact CWE lookup
Use the exact CWE identifier as the starting point before reviewing related ATT&CK behavior. Open the exact CWE lookup page first, then review the ATT&CK searches from that MITRE weakness context. This is a Glexia lookup hint, not an official ATT&CK mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2022-28204 mapping review
Open the CVE-to-ATT&CK bridge for reviewed, inferred, or future official mappings tied to this CVE.
Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.5 (3.1)
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5
These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.
CVSS vector scores
1 official scoreWe collect every scored CVSS vector available in the official CNA and ADP containers. When more than one version is present, the table keeps the source vectors side by side instead of collapsing them into the highest score.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H3.93.6Primary CVE scoreVulnerability scoring details
Base CVSS 3.1 score
7.5HighVector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297754CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.