Vulnerability DatabaseCVE-2025-53633

CVE-2025-53633:
vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Overview

CVE-2025-53633 affects Chall-Manager, a platform-agnostic system designed to start Challenges on Demand. The vulnerability was discovered and disclosed on July 10, 2025. The issue lies in the scenario decoding process where the size of decoded zip archive content is not checked, potentially leading to zip bombs decompression (NVD).

Technical details

The vulnerability is classified as an Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification) issue (CWE-405). It has received a CVSS v4.0 base score of 8.7 (HIGH) with the vector string CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N. The vulnerability exists in the decompression process where the system fails to validate the size of decoded content from zip archives (NVD, GitHub Advisory).

Impact

The vulnerability allows attackers to perform denial of service attacks through zip bomb decompression. The exploitation does not require authentication or authorization, making it accessible to any attacker who can reach the system. However, the impact is somewhat mitigated by the recommendation to deploy Chall-Manager deep within the infrastructure, limiting direct user access (NVD).

Mitigation and workarounds

The vulnerability has been patched in version v0.1.4 of Chall-Manager. The fix was implemented in commit 14042aa, which added proper handling of archive size during unzip operations to prevent zip bombing attacks. Users should upgrade to version v0.1.4 or later to mitigate this vulnerability (GitHub Commit, GitHub Release).