CVE-2014-8881
MEDIUMCVE-2014-8881 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) vulnerability in bleach. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2014-8881 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Regular Expression Denial of Service in bleach
Real-World Exposure
bleachReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects npm packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
All versions of the bleach package are vulnerable to a regular expression denial of service attack when certain types of input are passed into the sanitize function.
Recommendation
The bleach package is not currently maintained, and has not seen an update since 2014.
To mitigate this issue, it is necessary to use an alternative module that is actively maintained and provides similar functionality. There are multiple modules fitting this criteria available on npm..
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | bleach | ≥ 0.0.0 | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for bleach. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Remediation status
No patched version of bleach has shipped for CVE-2014-8881 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2014-8881 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2014-8881. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2014-8881 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2014-8881 across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.