Severity
High
Analysis Summary
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a directive requiring federal agencies to urgently secure their systems against a high-severity MongoDB vulnerability, actively exploited in the wild. The flaw, dubbed MongoBleed and tracked as CVE-2025-14847, was patched on December 19, 2025, and affects how MongoDB Server handles network packets when using the zlib compression library.
Exploitation of this vulnerability allows unauthenticated remote attackers to extract sensitive data directly from memory. Stolen information may include database credentials, API and cloud keys, session tokens, internal logs, and personally identifiable information (PII). The attack requires low complexity and no user interaction, significantly increasing the risk of widespread exploitation. Elastic Security researcher has publicly released a proof-of-concept exploit demonstrating memory leakage on unpatched MongoDB instances.
Internet exposure data highlights the scale of the issue. Researcher reports over 74,000 potentially vulnerable MongoDB instances exposed online, while other has identified more than 87,000 IP addresses running possibly unpatched versions. Cloud security firm confirmed active exploitation and found that 42% of visible cloud environments contain at least one vulnerable MongoDB instance. CISA has validated researchers findings and added the vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.
As a result, CISA has ordered Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies—including DHS, Treasury, DOE, and HHS—to remediate the vulnerability by January 19, 2026. Agencies are instructed to apply vendor patches, follow BOD 22-01 cloud guidance, or discontinue use if mitigations are unavailable.
For organizations unable to patch immediately, MongoDB recommends disabling zlib compression as a temporary mitigation. Additionally, a MongoBleed Detector tool is available to help administrators identify signs of exploitation through MongoDB log analysis.
Impact
- Credentials Theft
- Unauthorized Access
- Sensitive Information Disclosure
Indicators of Compromise
CVE
CVE-2025-14847
Affected Vendors
- MongoDB
Affected Products
- MongoDB Server 8.2
- MongoDB Server 8.0
- MongoDB Server 7.0
- MongoDB Server 6.0
- MongoDB Server 5.0
- MongoDB Server 4.4
- MongoDB Server 4.2
- MongoDB Server 4.0
- MongoDB Server 3.6
Remediation
- Apply the official MongoDB security patch released on December 19, 2025 to eliminate the vulnerability
- Upgrade MongoDB to the latest supported version to ensure all related fixes are applied
- Disable zlib compression on MongoDB servers to reduce exploitation risk when immediate patching is not possible
- Restrict network access to MongoDB instances using firewalls and security groups to limit exposure
- Remove direct Internet exposure of MongoDB services by placing them behind private networks or VPNs
- Monitor MongoDB logs for abnormal behavior or memory leakage indicators
- Use the MongoBleed Detector tool to identify potential exploitation attempts
- Rotate database credentials, API keys, and cloud secrets that may have been exposed
- Enforce strong authentication and role-based access control for MongoDB users
- Apply least-privilege access policies to minimize impact if exploitation occurs
- Conduct incident response and forensic analysis if compromise is suspected