jquery-validation Regular Expression Denial of Service due to arbitrary input to url2 methodGHSA-ffmh-x56j-9rc3
HIGHFix: jquery-validation/jquery-validation@5bbd80dGHSA-ffmh-x56j-9rc3 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-1333 vulnerability in jquery-validation. A fix is available for jquery-validation — 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-ffmh-x56j-9rc3.
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.
jquery-validationnpmDescription
The jQuery Validation Plugin (jquery-validation) provides drop-in validation for forms. Versions of jquery-validation prior to 1.19.5 are vulnerable to regular expression denial of service (ReDoS) when an attacker is able to supply arbitrary input to the url2 method. This is due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2021-43306. Users should upgrade to version 1.19.5 to receive a patch.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | jquery-validation | all versions | 1.19.5npm install jquery-validation@1.19.5 |
Affected Products
jquery validationjqueryvalidationDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for jquery-validation, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update jquery-validation to 1.19.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-ffmh-x56j-9rc3 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-ffmh-x56j-9rc3 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.