CVE-2021-33623 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in trim-newlines. A fix is available for trim-newlines — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption in trim-newlines
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2021-33623 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,738 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.
trim-newlinesnpmDescription
@rkesters/gnuplot is an easy to use node module to draw charts using gnuplot and ps2pdf. The trim-newlines package before 3.0.1 and 4.x before 4.0.1 for Node.js has an issue related to regular expression denial-of-service (ReDoS) for the .end() method.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | trim-newlines | all versions | 3.0.1npm install trim-newlines@3.0.1 |
| 📦npm | trim-newlines | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 4.0.1 | 4.0.1npm install trim-newlines@4.0.1 |
Affected Products
debian linuxdebiane-series performance analyzernetapptrim-newlinestrim-newlines_projectDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for trim-newlines, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update trim-newlines to 3.0.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-33623 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.
OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) grafana-container does package a vulnerable verison of nodejs trim-newlines. However due to the instance being read only and behind OpenShift OAuth, the impact by this vulnerability is Low. Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (ACM) containers affected by this flaw are…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Virtualization Engine 4.4 | ovirt-web-ui-0:1.9.0-1.el8ev | RHSA-2022:5555 |
| Cluster Observability Operator 1.5.0 | cluster-observability-operator/distributed-tracing-console-plugin-pf4-rhel9:1782840519 | RHSA-2026:34342 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-33623 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.