Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
CVE-2024-46242 describes a denial-of-service risk in CTFd 3.7.3 registration. A maliciously crafted email address can make the server spend excessive time evaluating a regular expression, potentially slowing or blocking registrations and related service availability. The record rates availability impact as high, but the supplied affected-product metadata is incomplete.
Executive priority
Prioritize exposed CTFd 3.7.3 systems because the issue can affect availability without authentication. Urgency is lower for private or registration-disabled deployments, but incomplete affected-version data means owners should verify rather than assume non-exposure.
Technical view
The issue is in CTFd/utils/validators/__init__.py validate_email. The CVE maps it to CWE-1333, inefficient regular expression complexity, with CVSS 3.1 score 7.5: network reachable, low complexity, no privileges, no user interaction, availability-only impact. The source bundle does not name a patch version or vendor advisory.
Likely exposure
Internet-facing CTFd deployments running version 3.7.3 with public registration enabled are the clearest exposure. Deployments without self-registration, behind access controls, or on other versions require confirmation because the source metadata lists affected vendor/product/version as n/a.
Exploitation context
The bundle does not show CISA KEV listing or confirmed active exploitation. It describes unauthenticated remote triggering during registration by submitting a crafted email address. Treat this as plausible availability risk, not proven in-the-wild exploitation from the provided evidence.
Researcher notes
Evidence is centered on the CVE description and a public gist reference. The affected-product block is not populated, and no patch version is provided in the bundle. Avoid asserting exploitation or remediation specifics beyond validating CTFd 3.7.3 exposure and checking vendor guidance.
Mitigation direction
- Check official CTFd guidance for a fixed release or validated workaround.
- Restrict or disable public registration where operationally acceptable.
- Add rate limiting around registration and account-creation endpoints.
- Monitor registration errors, latency spikes, and worker exhaustion indicators.
- Prioritize upgrade testing if running CTFd 3.7.3.
Validation and detection
- Inventory CTFd instances and confirm exact deployed versions.
- Confirm whether public self-registration is enabled.
- Review application logs for abnormal registration latency or repeated failed email submissions.
- Check dependency or source changes around validate_email before and after current builds.
- Verify compensating controls such as rate limits and upstream access restrictions.
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-1333: 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-2024-46242 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.
SSVC decision data
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:H3.93.6CISA-ADPVulnerability 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
Vulnerability timeline
Timeline events are normalized from CVE metadata, CNA source timelines, ADP timelines, and KEV metadata when present.
- CVE reservedCVE Program
The CVE ID was reserved by the assigning CNA.
- CVE publishedCVE Program
The CVE record was published.
- CVE updatedCVE Program
The CVE record metadata indicates this as the latest update time.
ADP provider summaries
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://gist.github.com/salvatore-abello/4f01f3fa54672febc0a492a11a26592cCVE reference, mitre
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.
Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity
Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.