AdonisJS HTTP Server: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption and Inefficient Regular Expression ComplexityGHSA-524c-h47v-m3h8
Fix: adonisjs/http-server@86af38cGHSA-524c-h47v-m3h8 is a Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in @adonisjs/http-server. A fix is available for @adonisjs/http-server — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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 GHSA-524c-h47v-m3h8.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
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.
@adonisjs/http-servernpmDescription
Description
A Regular Expression Denial of Service vulnerability in the built-in AdonisJS slug route matcher may allow a remote attacker to block the Node.js event loop using a specially crafted URL.
This affects applications using router.matchers.slug() on a route parameter reachable by an attacker.
Details
The regular expression used by router.matchers.slug() contains adjacent greedy quantifiers with overlapping character classes:
/^[^\s-_](?!.*?[-_]{2,})([a-z0-9-\\]{1,})[^\s]*[^-_\s]$/
When the matcher receives a long string ending with a character rejected by the final assertion, the regular expression engine must evaluate many possible ways of dividing the input between the overlapping quantifiers before determining that it does not match.
This results in quadratic execution time. Testing measured an approximate complexity of O(n^1.98).
Route matchers are evaluated against attacker-controlled URL segments during routing. Therefore, an unauthenticated attacker can trigger the vulnerable expression by sending a request to a route configured as follows:
router
.get('/posts/:slug', handler)
.where('slug', router.matchers.slug())
Routing occurs before route and group middleware. As a result, authentication or rate-limiting middleware attached to the affected route may not prevent exploitation.
The vulnerability is limited to routes that explicitly use the built-in slug matcher.
Impact
Exploitation requires an application to expose a route using router.matchers.slug() with an attacker-controlled parameter.
A specially crafted request can cause excessive CPU consumption and block the Node.js event loop. While the expression is being evaluated, the process cannot serve other requests, including requests to unrelated routes or health-check endpoints.
Only a small number of requests may be required to consume the capacity of a worker. Reverse-proxy request-line limits reduce the maximum processing time of an individual request but do not fully mitigate the vulnerability.
Patches
Fixes targeting v6 and v7 have been published below.
Users should upgrade to a version that includes the following fix:
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | @adonisjs/http-server | ≥ 9.0.0&&< 9.1.1 | 9.1.1npm install @adonisjs/http-server@9.1.1 |
| 📦npm | @adonisjs/http-server | all versions | 8.2.2npm install @adonisjs/http-server@8.2.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for @adonisjs/http-server, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update @adonisjs/http-server to 9.1.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-524c-h47v-m3h8 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 GHSA-524c-h47v-m3h8 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.