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GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c CVE-2017-16137

Regular Expression Denial of Service in debug

Low npm
Severity
3.7 / 10
Low · CVSS 3.1
Exploit chance (EPSS)
2.83%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 86.63% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Fix
2.6.9
Upgrade debug to this version or later

Description

Affected versions of debug are vulnerable to regular expression denial of service when untrusted user input is passed into the o formatter.

As it takes 50,000 characters to block the event loop for 2 seconds, this issue is a low severity issue.

This was later re-introduced in version v3.2.0, and then repatched in versions 3.2.7 and 4.3.1.

Recommendation

Version 2.x.x: Update to version 2.6.9 or later. Version 3.1.x: Update to version 3.1.0 or later. Version 3.2.x: Update to version 3.2.7 or later. Version 4.x.x: Update to version 4.3.1 or later.

Affected versions

npm

PackageVulnerableFixed in
debug
< 2.6.9
2.6.9
debug
>= 3.0.0, < 3.1.0
3.1.0
debug
>= 3.2.0, < 3.2.7
3.2.7
debug
>= 4.0.0, < 4.3.1
4.3.1

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

debug npm → 2.6.9

npm
npm install debug@2.6.9
yarn
yarn add debug@2.6.9
pnpm
pnpm add debug@2.6.9

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.1 3.7

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

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

Weakness

CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.

How to prevent it
  • Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
  • Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.
  • Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
  • Implementation: Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
  3. Latest EPSS score
AdvisorySeverityWhy it's related
GHSA-4x49-vf9v-38px
debug@4.4.2 contains malware after npm account takeover
High Also affects debug
GHSA-9vvw-cc9w-f27h
debug Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity vulnerability
High Also affects debug
GHSA-cggf-277g-3q54
pypdf has possible large memory usage when parsing page tree
High Same weakness, CWE-400
GHSA-3g3m-2fjr-6pw4
Glob: AbortSignal cancellation bypass allows post-timeout filesystem traversal
Medium Same weakness, CWE-400
GHSA-42gh-23hr-vphw
pypdf has possible long runtimes when retrieving page labels
High Same weakness, CWE-400
GHSA-4vqv-7265-gm2w
pypdf has possible large memory usage for exceptions in strict mode
High Same weakness, CWE-400
GHSA-62m5-6wh8-28x7
pypdf has possible long runtimes/large memory usage for encrypted PDF files
High Same weakness, CWE-400
GHSA-7wch-p9px-956x
Forge: Regular expression denial of service in PEM decoding (pem.decode)
High Same weakness, CWE-400
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