GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c is a low-severity (CVSS 3.7) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in debug. A fix is available for debug — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Regular Expression Denial of Service in debug
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,166 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
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.
debugnpmDescription
Affected versions of debug are vulnerable to regular expression denial of service when untrusted user input is passed into the o formatter.
As it takes 50,000 characters to block the event loop for 2 seconds, this issue is a low severity issue.
This was later re-introduced in version v3.2.0, and then repatched in versions 3.2.7 and 4.3.1.
Recommendation
Version 2.x.x: Update to version 2.6.9 or later. Version 3.1.x: Update to version 3.1.0 or later. Version 3.2.x: Update to version 3.2.7 or later. Version 4.x.x: Update to version 4.3.1 or later.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | debug | all versions | 2.6.9npm install debug@2.6.9 |
| 📦npm | debug | ≥ 3.0.0&&< 3.1.0 | 3.1.0npm install debug@3.1.0 |
| 📦npm | debug | ≥ 3.2.0&&< 3.2.7 | 3.2.7npm install debug@3.2.7 |
| 📦npm | debug | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 4.3.1 | 4.3.1npm install debug@4.3.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for debug, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update debug to 2.6.9 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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.
This issue affects the versions of rh-nodejs4-nodejs-debug, rh-nodejs6-nodejs-debug, and rh-nodejs8-nodejs-debug as shipped with Red Hat Software Collections 3. Red Hat Product Security has rated this issue as having Moderate security impact. A future update may address this issue. For additional information, refer to…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Quay 3 | quay/quay-rhel8:v3.6.0-62 | RHSA-2021:3917 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.