GHSA-3PPC-4F35-3M26

Vulnerability from github – Published: 2026-02-18 22:38 – Updated: 2026-02-24 20:59
VLAI
Summary
minimatch has a ReDoS via repeated wildcards with non-matching literal in pattern
Details

Summary

minimatch is vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) when a glob pattern contains many consecutive * wildcards followed by a literal character that doesn't appear in the test string. Each * compiles to a separate [^/]*? regex group, and when the match fails, V8's regex engine backtracks exponentially across all possible splits.

The time complexity is O(4^N) where N is the number of * characters. With N=15, a single minimatch() call takes ~2 seconds. With N=34, it hangs effectively forever.

Details

Give all details on the vulnerability. Pointing to the incriminated source code is very helpful for the maintainer.

PoC

When minimatch compiles a glob pattern, each * becomes [^/]*? in the generated regex. For a pattern like ***************X***:

/^(?!\.)[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?X[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?$/

When the test string doesn't contain X, the regex engine must try every possible way to distribute the characters across all the [^/]*? groups before concluding no match exists. With N groups and M characters, this is O(C(N+M, N)) — exponential.

Impact

Any application that passes user-controlled strings to minimatch() as the pattern argument is vulnerable to DoS. This includes: - File search/filter UIs that accept glob patterns - .gitignore-style filtering with user-defined rules - Build tools that accept glob configuration - Any API that exposes glob matching to untrusted input

Thanks to @ljharb for back-porting the fix to legacy versions of minimatch.

Severity
8.7 (High)
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
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{
  "affected": [
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "npm",
        "name": "minimatch"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "10.0.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "10.2.1"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "npm",
        "name": "minimatch"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "9.0.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "9.0.6"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "npm",
        "name": "minimatch"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "8.0.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "8.0.5"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "npm",
        "name": "minimatch"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "7.0.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "7.4.7"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "npm",
        "name": "minimatch"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "6.0.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "6.2.1"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "npm",
        "name": "minimatch"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "5.0.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "5.1.7"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "npm",
        "name": "minimatch"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "4.0.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "4.2.4"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "npm",
        "name": "minimatch"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "3.1.3"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "aliases": [
    "CVE-2026-26996"
  ],
  "database_specific": {
    "cwe_ids": [
      "CWE-1333"
    ],
    "github_reviewed": true,
    "github_reviewed_at": "2026-02-18T22:38:11Z",
    "nvd_published_at": "2026-02-20T03:16:01Z",
    "severity": "HIGH"
  },
  "details": "### Summary\n`minimatch` is vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) when a glob pattern contains many consecutive `*` wildcards followed by a literal character that doesn\u0027t appear in the test string. Each `*` compiles to a separate `[^/]*?` regex group, and when the match fails, V8\u0027s regex engine backtracks exponentially across all possible splits.\n\nThe time complexity is O(4^N) where N is the number of `*` characters. With N=15, a single `minimatch()` call takes ~2 seconds. With N=34, it hangs effectively forever.\n\n\n### Details\n_Give all details on the vulnerability. Pointing to the incriminated source code is very helpful for the maintainer._\n\n### PoC\nWhen minimatch compiles a glob pattern, each `*` becomes `[^/]*?` in the generated regex. For a pattern like `***************X***`:\n\n```\n/^(?!\\.)[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?X[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?$/\n```\n\nWhen the test string doesn\u0027t contain `X`, the regex engine must try every possible way to distribute the characters across all the `[^/]*?` groups before concluding no match exists. With N groups and M characters, this is O(C(N+M, N)) \u2014 exponential.\n### Impact\nAny application that passes user-controlled strings to `minimatch()` as the pattern argument is vulnerable to DoS. This includes:\n- File search/filter UIs that accept glob patterns\n- `.gitignore`-style filtering with user-defined rules\n- Build tools that accept glob configuration\n- Any API that exposes glob matching to untrusted input\n\n----\n\nThanks to @ljharb for back-porting the fix to legacy versions of minimatch.",
  "id": "GHSA-3ppc-4f35-3m26",
  "modified": "2026-02-24T20:59:57Z",
  "published": "2026-02-18T22:38:11Z",
  "references": [
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/isaacs/minimatch/security/advisories/GHSA-3ppc-4f35-3m26"
    },
    {
      "type": "ADVISORY",
      "url": "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-26996"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/isaacs/minimatch/commit/2e111f3a79abc00fa73110195de2c0f2351904f5"
    },
    {
      "type": "PACKAGE",
      "url": "https://github.com/isaacs/minimatch"
    }
  ],
  "schema_version": "1.4.0",
  "severity": [
    {
      "score": "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N",
      "type": "CVSS_V4"
    }
  ],
  "summary": "minimatch has a ReDoS via repeated wildcards with non-matching literal in pattern"
}


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