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Regular Expression Denial of Service in string package

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jul 24, 2018 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Sep 12, 2023

Package

npm string (npm)

Affected versions

<= 3.3.3

Patched versions

None

Description

Affected versions of string are vulnerable to regular expression denial of service when specifically crafted untrusted user input is passed into the underscore or unescapeHTML methods.

Recommendation

There is currently no direct patch for this vulnerability.

Currently, the best solution is to avoid passing user input to the underscore and unescapeHTML methods.

Alternatively, a user provided patch is available in Pull Request #217, however this patch has not been tested, nor has it been merged by the package author.

References

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jul 24, 2018
Reviewed Jun 16, 2020
Last updated Sep 12, 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

0.109%
(45th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2017-16116

GHSA ID

GHSA-g36h-6r4f-3mqp

Source code

No known source code
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