@octokit/request-error has a Regular Expression in index that Leads to ReDoS Vulnerability Due to Catastrophic Backtracking

published 2025-02-14 20 mo ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-xx4v-prfh-6cgc , EUVD-2025-4103

cvss: 5.3; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.6%; EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 50%
public exploits: 0; none known

@octokit/request-error is an error class for Octokit request errors. Starting in version 1.0.0 and prior to version 6.1.7, a Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability exists in the processing of HTTP request headers. By sending an authorization header containing an excessively long sequence of spaces followed by a newline and "@", an attacker can exploit inefficient regular expression processing, leading to excessive resource consumption. This can significantly degrade server performance or cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition, impacting availability. Version 6.1.7 contains a fix for the issue.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1 links 1

npm @octokit/request-error 5.1.1, 6.1.7

github.com/octokit/request-error.js@d558320 commit

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-25289 updated 2026-10-27 cvss 5.3

@octokit/request-error: @octokit/request-error has a Regular Expression in index that Leads to ReDoS Vulnerability Due to Catastrophic Backtracking

Red Hat Developer Hub 1 rhdh-hub-rhel9
affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: Proof of concept is public
Automatable: yes
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 20 mo ago (2025-02-14)

Exploit prediction

0.63% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 50% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	5.3	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
GitHub	3.1	5.3	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
npm	@octokit/request-error	>=1.0.0, <5.1.1 >=6.0.0, <6.1.7	5.1.1 6.1.7

Affected products

octokit request-error.js

Classification

Weakness

CWE-1333 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary