Predictive Vulnerability Intelligence.

Product

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Documentation

Company

  • About
  • Partnerships
  • Blog
  • Support

Legal

  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Data Licensing

© 2026 FAUCET Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

CVE-2015-8389

32
FAUCET Score

CVE-2015-8389 is a critical denial-of-service vulnerability affecting PCRE versions prior to 8.38, including its use in Fedora and PHP. It arises from mishandling specific regular expression patterns, such as /(?:|a|){100}x/, leading to infinite recursion. With a CVSS score of 9.8, this vulnerability is easily exploitable over a network with low attack complexity, potentially resulting in complete system compromise (confidentiality, integrity, and availability). Despite its severity, there is no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code, or significant community discussion surrounding this CVE.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
<= 8.37CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:pcre:perl_compatible_regular_expression_library:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
22CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:22:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 5.5.0, < 5.5.32CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:php:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 5.6.0, < 5.6.18CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:php:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 7.0.0, < 7.0.3CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:php:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

9.8CRITICAL

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

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
3.9
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
3.89%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
89.1%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-26
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0389 is in the 82nd percentile among its peer group of 36,835 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.3 Bluesky, 0.3 Mastodon, and 2.4 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2015-8389Moderate

pcre: infinite recursion in JIT compiler when processing certain patterns (8.38/21)

Nov 23, 2015

References

lists.fedoraproject.org / pipermail/package-announce/2016-January/174931.html
Third Party Advisory
bto.bluecoat.com / security-advisory/sa128
Permissions RequiredThird Party Advisory
h20566.www2.hpe.com / portal/site/hpsc/public/kb/docDisplay
Third Party Advisory
security.gentoo.org / glsa/201607-02
Third Party Advisory
security.netapp.com / advisory/ntap-20230216-0002
vcs.pcre.org / pcre/code/trunk/ChangeLog
Release NotesVendor Advisory
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2015/11/29/1
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
securityfocus.com / bid/82990
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry