CVE-2016-2515 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-399 vulnerability in hawk. A fix is available for hawk — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Regular Expression Denial of Service in hawk
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
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.
hawknpmDescription
Hawk before 3.1.3 and 4.x before 4.1.1 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption or partial outage) via a long (1) header or (2) URI that is matched against an improper regular expression.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | hawk | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 4.1.1 | 4.1.1npm install hawk@4.1.1 |
| 📦npm | hawk | all versions | 3.1.3npm install hawk@3.1.3 |
Affected Products
hawkhawk_projectDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for hawk, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update hawk to 4.1.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2016-2515 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-2515 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.