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Fencer Intel
medium 5.3

CVE-2016-1000232 json

ReDoS via long string of semicolons in tough-cookie

published 2018-09-05 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-qhv9-728r-6jqg , EUVD-2018-0666

cvss
5.3
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.4%
EPSS 2.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 83%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

NodeJS Tough-Cookie version 2.2.2 contains a Regular Expression Parsing vulnerability in HTTP request Cookie Header parsing that can result in Denial of Service. This attack appear to be exploitable via Custom HTTP header passed by client. This vulnerability appears to have been fixed in 2.3.0.

Patch / fix

  • npm tough-cookie 2.3.0
  • rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 2.3.3-2.el6
  • rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 2.3.3-2.el7
  • nodejs openshift 3.3, openshift 3.2, openshift 3.1 0.10.47-2.el7
  • nodejs-tough-cookie openshift 3.3, openshift 3.2, openshift 3.1 2.3.1-1.el7

red hat advisories RHSA-2017:2912RHSA-2016:2101

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2016-1000232 updated cvss 5.3

nodejs-tough-cookie: regular expression DoS via Cookie header with many semicolons

  • Red Hat Software Collections nodejs010-nodejs-tough-cookie
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.2 nodejs 0.10.47-2.el7, nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.1-1.el7 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.3 nodejs 0.10.47-2.el7, nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.1-1.el7 Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 3.1 nodejs 0.10.47-2.el7, nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.1-1.el7
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2016:2101
  • Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.3-2.el6 Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.3-2.el7 Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 6.7) rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.3-2.el6 Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 7.3) rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.3-2.el7 Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.3-2.el6 Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie 2.3.3-2.el7
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:2912
  • Red Hat Software Collections rh-nodejs6-nodejs-tough-cookie
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

2.36% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 83% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 5.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
GitHub 3.0 5.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm tough-cookie
<2.3.0
2.3.0

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-1333 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.