GHSA-6chw-6frg-f759 Regular Expression Denial of Service in Acorn

Not scored Published

Attackers can cause a denial of service in applications using the Acorn parser by submitting specific invalid UTF-16 strings that trigger an infinite loop.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Not needed
Attackable
Over the internet
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
Available

What is GHSA-6chw-6frg-f759?

GHSA-6chw-6frg-f759 is a denial of service vulnerability in acorn, published on 3 Apr 2020. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Affected versions of acorn are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service. A regex in the form of /[x-\ud800]/u causes the parser to enter an infinite loop. The string is not valid UTF16 which usually results in it being sanitized before reaching the parser. If an application processes untrusted input and passes it directly to acorn, attackers may leverage the vulnerability leading to Denial of Service.

Which versions are affected by GHSA-6chw-6frg-f759?

6 open source packages ship an affected version, including acorn.

PackageAffectedFixed in
acorn npmFrom 5.5.05.7.4
acorn npmFrom 5.5.05.7.4
acorn npmFrom 6.0.06.4.1
acorn npmFrom 6.0.06.4.1
acorn npmFrom 7.0.07.1.1
acorn npmFrom 7.0.07.1.1

How do I fix GHSA-6chw-6frg-f759?

Upgrade acorn to a fixed version for your release line: 5.7.4, 6.4.1 or 7.1.1.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is GHSA-6chw-6frg-f759 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of GHSA-6chw-6frg-f759 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

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