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GHSA-54fx-42gc-7vw4
No affected components available
Summary
The languageDetector middleware is vulnerable to algorithmic complexity denial of service when processing a crafted language tag containing a large number of hyphen-separated subtags.
Details
To implement progressive language-tag truncation, normalizeLanguage() repeatedly calls parts.slice(0, i).join('-') for every possible prefix. The total amount of string processing grows quadratically with the number of subtags.
Language values may come from a query parameter, cookie, Accept-Language header, or URL path, depending on the detector configuration. The default detector order enables query-string, cookie, and header detection, so applications using languageDetector() may expose this processing to unauthenticated requests.
Request-size limits reduce the maximum cost of a single request but do not eliminate the issue. Inputs accepted by common JavaScript runtimes can still cause noticeable synchronous event-loop blocking.
Impact
An attacker may repeatedly send requests containing long, hyphen-separated language tags, causing excessive CPU consumption and preventing unrelated requests from being processed.
The practical impact depends on the runtime's request-size limits, reverse-proxy configuration, and the detectors enabled by the application.
Resolution
The progressive lookup should avoid reconstructing every shorter prefix. The implementation can instead inspect the configured supported languages and select the longest value that matches the input at a hyphen boundary.
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a low impact on the availability of the system.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
Probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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