CVE-2015-20110 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-307 vulnerability in generator-jhipster. A fix is available for generator-jhipster — see the affected versions and patch details below.
generator-jhipster allows a timing attack against validateToken due to a string comparison that stops at the first character
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2015-20110.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2015-20110 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,567 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
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.
generator-jhipsternpmDescription
JHipster generator-jhipster before 2.23.0 allows a timing attack against validateToken due to a string comparison that stops at the first character that is different. Attackers can guess tokens by brute forcing one character at a time and observing the timing. This of course drastically reduces the search space to a linear amount of guesses based on the token length times the possible characters.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | generator-jhipster | all versions | 2.23.0npm install generator-jhipster@2.23.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for generator-jhipster, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update generator-jhipster to 2.23.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2015-20110 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2015-20110 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2015-20110. 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-2015-20110 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2015-20110 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.