CVE-2015-8381

high

Published 2015-12-02 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

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CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

7.5

Description

The compile_regex function in pcre_compile.c in PCRE before 8.38 and pcre2_compile.c in PCRE2 before 10.2x mishandles the /(?J:(?|(:(?|(?'R')(\k'R')|((?'R')))H'Rk'Rf)|s(?'R'))))/ and /(?J:(?|(:(?|(?'R')(\z(?|(?'R')(\k'R')|((?'R')))k'R')|((?'R')))H'Ak'Rf)|s(?'R')))/ patterns, and related patterns with certain group references, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (heap-based buffer overflow) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a crafted regular expression, as demonstrated by a JavaScript RegExp object encountered by Konqueror.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

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Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
debian	bookworm	fixed	`2:8.38-1`
debian	bullseye	fixed	`2:8.38-1`

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
pcre	perl_compatible_regular_expression_library	`{"endIncluding":"8.37"}`

References

CWEs

CWE-119

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.