parse-duration has a Regex Denial of Service that results in event loop delay and out of memory

Exploitation

No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.

CVSS

7.5 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS

• CVE-2025-25283: 0.77% estimated exploitation activity in the next 30 days; percentile 55.81 (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-03). This is a model estimate, not proof of exploitation or customer exposure.

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

Summary This report finds 2 availability issues due to the regex used in the parse-duration npm package: 1. An event loop delay due to the CPU-bound operation of resolving the provided string, from a 0.5ms and up to ~50ms per one operation, with a varying size from 0.01 MB and up to 4.3 MB respectively. 2. An out of memory that would crash a running Node.js application due to a string size of roughly 10 MB that utilizes unicode characters. PoC Refer to the following proof of concept code that provides a test case and makes use of the regular expression in the library as its test case to match against strings: The results of this on the cloud machine that I ran this on are as follows: You can note that: 1. 0.01 MB of input was enough to cause a 1ms delay (0.92ms) 2. Ranging from either 3 MB to 4 MB of input results in almost a full second day (728ms) and 42 ms, depending on the characters used in the text passed to the library's parse() function 3. A 200 MB of input size already…

Published by the source

12 Feb 2025, 19:45 UTC

Last modified by the source

12 Feb 2025, 21:35 UTC

Source last checked

26 Oct 2026, 12:36 UTC

1. Revision 2 · amended · 26 Oct 2026

   Amended from ghsa record GHSA-hcrg-fc28-fcg5

2. Revision 1 · created · 24 Oct 2026

   Published from osv record GHSA-hcrg-fc28-fcg5

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# Patch Next advisory brief: CVE-2025-25283

Advisory: parse-duration has a Regex Denial of Service that results in event loop delay and out of memory
IDs: CVE-2025-25283, GHSA-hcrg-fc28-fcg5
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/cve-2025-25283 (revision 2, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 12:36 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: High (CVSS 7.5)
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Vendor fix available; fixed versions by package: parse-duration 2.1.3. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- npm parse-duration: affected < 2.1.3; fixed in 2.1.3

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- `npm ls parse-duration --all`: lists every installed copy and version, including transitive ones. Run in the project root after `npm ci`.

## Supported action
Upgrade each affected component to a fixed version on its release line. For a transitive dependency, upgrade the parent package or add an override or constraint, then regenerate the lockfile. Redeploy every environment that ran an affected version.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on parse-duration.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/GHSA-hcrg-fc28-fcg5 (OSV record GHSA-hcrg-fc28-fcg5 lists affected ranges: npm parse-duration >=0 <2.1.3 (fixed))
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-hcrg-fc28-fcg5 (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-hcrg-fc28-fcg5 lists affected ranges: npm parse-duration >=0 <2.1.3)

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