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Regular Expression Denial of Service in timespan

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Aug 29, 2018 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Sep 13, 2023

Package

npm timespan (npm)

Affected versions

<= 2.3.0

Patched versions

None

Description

Affected versions of timespan are vulnerable to a regular expression denial of service when parsing dates.

The amplification for this vulnerability is significant, with 50,000 characters resulting in the event loop being blocked for around 10 seconds.

Recommendation

No direct patch is available for this vulnerability.

Currently, the best available solution is to use a functionally equivalent alternative package.

It is also sufficient to ensure that user input is not being passed into timespan, or that the maximum length of such user input is drastically reduced. Limiting the input length to 150 characters should be sufficient in most cases.

References

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Aug 29, 2018
Reviewed Jun 16, 2020
Last updated Sep 13, 2023

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.105%
(44th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2017-16115

GHSA ID

GHSA-f523-2f5j-gfcg

Source code

No known source code
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