Wagtail is an open source content management system built on Django. 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). Patched versions have been released as Wagtail 5.2.6, 6.0.6 and 6.1.3.
https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/security/advisories/GHSA-jmp3-39vp-fwg8
https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/commit/b783c096b6d4fd2cfc05f9137a0be288850e99a2
https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/commit/3c941136f79c48446e3858df46e5b668d7f83797
https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/commit/31b1e8532dfb1b70d8d37d22aff9cbde9109cdf2
Published: 2024-07-11
Updated: 2026-03-20
Base Score: 6.1
Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:M/C:N/I:N/A:C
Severity: Medium
Base Score: 4.9
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Severity: Medium
Base Score: 7.1
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Severity: High
EPSS: 0.00842