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No Charset in Content-Type Header in express

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Oct 23, 2018 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Feb 1, 2023

Package

npm express (npm)

Affected versions

< 3.11.0
>= 4.0.0, < 4.5.0

Patched versions

3.11.0
4.5.0

Description

Vulnerable versions of express do not specify a charset field in the content-type header while displaying 400 level response messages. The lack of enforcing user's browser to set correct charset, could be leveraged by an attacker to perform a cross-site scripting attack, using non-standard encodings, like UTF-7.

Recommendation

For express 3.x, update express to version 3.11 or later.
For express 4.x, update express to version 4.5 or later.

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Aug 9, 2017
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Oct 23, 2018
Reviewed Jun 16, 2020
Last updated Feb 1, 2023

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

EPSS score

0.071%
(33rd percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2014-6393

GHSA ID

GHSA-gpvr-g6gh-9mc2

Source code

No known source code
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