CVE-2016-1000232 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in tough-cookie. A fix is available for tough-cookie — see the affected versions and patch details below.
ReDoS via long string of semicolons in tough-cookie
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2016-1000232 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
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.
tough-cookienpmDescription
NodeJS Tough-Cookie version 2.2.2 contains a Regular Expression Parsing vulnerability in HTTP request Cookie Header parsing that can result in Denial of Service. This attack appear to be exploitable via Custom HTTP header passed by client. This vulnerability appears to have been fixed in 2.3.0.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | tough-cookie | all versions | 2.3.0npm install tough-cookie@2.3.0 |
Affected Products
api connectibmopenshift container platformredhattough-cookiesalesforceDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for tough-cookie, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update tough-cookie to 2.3.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2016-1000232 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
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.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.2 | nodejs-0:0.10.47-2.el7 | RHSA-2016:2101 |
| Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | rh-nodejs4-nodejs-tough-cookie-0:2.3.3-2.el6 | RHSA-2017:2912 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-1000232 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.