Denial of service via unbounded sanitization recursion
Published Sep 14, 2025 · Updated Sep 14, 2025
Uncontrolled recursion in express-xss-sanitizer before 2.0.1 allows remote attackers to crash a Node.js process with deeply nested JSON. The sanitize function in lib/sanitize.js recursively traverses nested arrays and objects without enforcing a depth limit, exhausting the JavaScript call stack. An endpoint must parse attacker-supplied JSON and pass it through the middleware or sanitize API; successful exploitation interrupts only that Node.js service.
Summary
What happened
Uncontrolled recursion in express-xss-sanitizer before 2.0.1 allows remote attackers to crash a Node.js process with deeply nested JSON. The sanitize function in lib/sanitize.js recursively traverses nested arrays and objects without enforcing a depth limit, exhausting the JavaScript call stack. An endpoint must parse attacker-supplied JSON and pass it through the middleware or sanitize API; successful exploitation interrupts only that Node.js service.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2025-59364
- Published
- Sep 14, 2025
- Updated
- Sep 14, 2025
- Vendor
- Express XSS Sanitizer project
- Product
- express-xss-sanitizer
- Classifications
- CWE-674, T1499
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 14, 2025CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Sep 14, 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?
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- Affected versionversion=2.0.0
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.
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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