Regular Expression Denial of Service in string package

published 2018-06-07 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-g36h-6r4f-3mqp , EUVD-2018-0267

cvss: 7.5; version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.6%; EPSS 1.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 76%
public exploits: 0; none known

The string module is a module that provides extra string operations. The string module is vulnerable to regular expression denial of service when specifically crafted untrusted user input is passed into the underscore or unescapeHTML methods.

Patch / fix

links 1

nodesecurity.io/advisories/536 advisory

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-2017-16116 updated 2025-11-21 cvss 7.5

nodejs-string: Regular expression denial of service

Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
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

1.63% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 76% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

github.com https://github.com/jprichardson/string.js/issues/212 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.1	7.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD	2.0	5.0	AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
GitHub	3.1	7.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
npm	string	<=3.3.3	no fix listed

Affected products

HackerOne string node module

Classification

Weakness

CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

References

nodesecurity.io /advisories/536
patch, third-party-advisory
github.com /jprichardson/string.js/issues/212
web, exploit, third-party-advisory
nvd.nist.gov /vuln/detail/CVE-2017-16116
advisory
github.com /advisories/GHSA-g36h-6r4f-3mqp
advisory
npmjs.com /advisories/536
web

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.

Summary