How severe is CVE-2014-8881?

CVE-2014-8881 has a CVSS score of 5.3/10, rated MEDIUM. Review your exposure and patch according to your risk tolerance.

Which packages are affected by CVE-2014-8881?

CVE-2014-8881 affects the following packages: bleach (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix CVE-2014-8881?

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.

How do I detect CVE-2014-8881 in my npm dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for bleach, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

How do I mitigate CVE-2014-8881 if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.

Is CVE-2014-8881 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for CVE-2014-8881 yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

When was CVE-2014-8881 published, and has it been updated?

CVE-2014-8881 was published on September 1, 2020 and was last updated on November 8, 2023. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

📦

📦 npm

Not in CISA KEV

MEDIUM severity

CVE-2014-8881 — bleach

MEDIUM

CVE-2014-8881 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) vulnerability in bleach. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.

Regular Expression Denial of Service in bleach

Published

Sep 1, 2020

Updated

Nov 8, 2023

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

None yet

Exploits

None indexed

Exploitation data as of Nov 8, 2023 · OSV.dev, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected

How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.

3other npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream

bleachnpm

155downloads / week

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

1 total

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`bleach`	≥ 0.0.0	No fix

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for bleach, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
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
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.

Frequently Asked Questions

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.](https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=html%20sanitizer&page=1&ranking=optimal).

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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