What is CVE-2020-36649?

CVE-2020-36649 is a low-severity vulnerability in Mholt Papaparse, classified under Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity. CVSS score: 3.5/10. Published 2023-01-11.

How severe is CVE-2020-36649?

Low severity. CVSS v3 base score is 3.5 out of 10.

Is CVE-2020-36649 known to be exploited?

1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Vulnerability in Mholt Papaparse

CVE-2020-36649

A vulnerability was found in mholt PapaParse up to 5.1.x. It has been classified as problematic. Affected is an unknown function of the file papaparse.js. The manipulation leads to inefficient regular expression complexity. Upgrading to version 5.2.0 is able to address this issue. The name of the patch is 235a12758cd77266d2e98fd715f53536b34ad621. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component. The identifier of this vulnerability is VDB-218004.

Vulnerability class: ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service)

Published 2023-01-11 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 3.5 (Low). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.014 (71.2th percentile), scored 2026-10-01.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 71st percentile — 71.2% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.014 · newest: 0.014 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Mholt Papaparse — versions 5.0, 5.1
Papaparse

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-1333 — Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

Public proof-of-concept exploits

Live-Hack-CVE/CVE-2020-36649

References

vuldb.com/ (Permissions Required, technical-description, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
vuldb.com/ (signature, Permissions Required, permissions-required, Third Party Advisory)
github.com/mholt/PapaParse/issues/777 (issue-tracking, Exploit, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
github.com/mholt/PapaParse/pull/779 (issue-tracking, Patch, Third Party Advisory)
github.com/mholt/PapaParse/commit/235a12758cd77266d2e98fd715f53536b34ad621 (Patch, Third Party Advisory, patch)
github.com/mholt/PapaParse/releases/tag/5.2.0 (Third Party Advisory, Release Notes, patch)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-36649?: CVE-2020-36649 is a low-severity vulnerability in Mholt Papaparse, classified under Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity. CVSS score: 3.5/10. Published 2023-01-11.
How severe is CVE-2020-36649?: Low severity. CVSS v3 base score is 3.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2020-36649 known to be exploited?: 1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.