Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
CVE-2015-9239 describes a denial-of-service risk in the ansi2html Node module. Certain user-supplied input can trigger excessive regular-expression processing, potentially slowing or tying up the application that performs the conversion.
Executive priority
Treat this as a targeted availability risk. Prioritize it for internet-facing or multi-tenant services that render user-controlled logs or terminal output; otherwise handle through dependency hygiene and backlog remediation.
Technical view
The issue is a CWE-400 uncontrolled resource consumption flaw caused by ReDoS behavior in ansi2html when processing specific input. The source bundle lists the HackerOne ansi2html node module and says all versions are affected. No CVSS vector, patch version, or vendor mitigation is provided.
Likely exposure
Exposure is most likely where ansi2html processes untrusted or externally supplied ANSI text, such as uploaded logs, terminal output, support artifacts, CI output, or web-submitted text rendered as HTML.
Exploitation context
The provided sources do not show CISA KEV listing or confirmed active exploitation. Practical impact depends on whether attackers can submit content to an application path that invokes ansi2html.
Researcher notes
Evidence is sparse: affected scope is stated as all versions, but the bundle includes no CVSS, vulnerable regex details, fixed release, or exploit confirmation. Validate reachability before assigning high operational urgency.
Mitigation direction
- Inventory package manifests and lockfiles for ansi2html usage.
- Avoid passing untrusted input to ansi2html where feasible.
- Apply input size limits before ANSI-to-HTML conversion.
- Isolate or timeout conversion work to reduce service impact.
- Check current vendor or package guidance for replacement or remediation status.
Validation and detection
- Search dependency manifests and lockfiles for ansi2html.
- Trace application paths that convert ANSI text to HTML.
- Confirm whether those paths accept external or tenant-controlled input.
- Review monitoring for conversion latency, worker saturation, or request timeouts.
- Run only approved non-production resilience tests with representative long inputs.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CWE-400: Exact CWE lookup
Use the exact CWE identifier as the starting point before reviewing related ATT&CK behavior. Open the exact CWE lookup page first, then review the ATT&CK searches from that MITRE weakness context. This is a Glexia lookup hint, not an official ATT&CK mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2015-9239 mapping review
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Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- Unknown
- CVSS
- Not scored
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5
These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.
CVSS and timeline data
No CVSS vectors or timeline events were available in the normalized CVE source material.
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://nodesecurity.io/advisories/51CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.