Service interruption via insecure attribute regex
Published Sep 30, 2022 · Updated May 20, 2025
Regular expression denial of service in css-what before 2.1.3 allows remote attackers to interrupt services via crafted CSS selectors. The parse function applies the re_attr regular expression in index.js to attacker-controlled selector text, permitting catastrophic backtracking and excessive CPU consumption. Any application that parses untrusted selectors is exposed, and the bounded consequence is service hang or slowdown without data disclosure or modification.
Summary
What happened
Regular expression denial of service in css-what before 2.1.3 allows remote attackers to interrupt services via crafted CSS selectors. The parse function applies the re_attr regular expression in index.js to attacker-controlled selector text, permitting catastrophic backtracking and excessive CPU consumption. Any application that parses untrusted selectors is exposed, and the bounded consequence is service hang or slowdown without data disclosure or modification.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2022-21222
- Published
- Sep 30, 2022
- Updated
- May 20, 2025
- Vendor
- css-what Project
- Product
- css-what
- Classifications
- CWE-1333, CWE-400, T1499
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 30, 2022CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 20, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=unspecified <2.1.3
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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