devalue vulnerable to denial of service due to memory/CPU exhaustion in devalue.parse

Description

Summary

Certain inputs can cause devalue.parse to consume excessive CPU time and/or memory, potentially leading to denial of service in systems that parse input from untrusted sources. This affects applications using devalue.parse on externally-supplied data. The root cause is the ArrayBuffer hydration expecting base64 encoded strings as input, but not checking the assumption before decoding the input.

Details

The parser's ArrayBuffer hydration logic does not properly validate input before processing. Specially crafted inputs can cause disproportionate memory allocation or CPU usage on the receiving system.

Impact

This is a denial of service vulnerability affecting systems that use devalue.parse to handle data from potentially untrusted sources.

Affected systems should upgrade to patched versions immediately.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
high
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2026-01-15 22:15:18 UTC
Updated
2026-01-15 22:15:22 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2026-01-15 22:15:18 UTC
NVD published
2026-01-15

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.02% 4.91%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
7.5 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-405 Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification)

Credits

  • jviide (reporter)
  • elliott-with-the-longest-name-on-github (remediation_developer)
  • Rich-Harris (remediation_reviewer)

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
npm devalue >= 5.1.0, < 5.6.2 5.6.2

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence