GCVE Workshop - 22 September 2026 (14:00-18:00), Luxembourg Before The Vulnopticon Conference - Registration

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
Show details on source website
To clipboard 

{
  "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"
}



Log in or create an account to share your comment.




Tags
Taxonomy of the tags.





Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.

Sightings

Author Source Type Date Other

Nomenclature

  • Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
  • Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
  • Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
  • Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
  • Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.


Detection rules are retrieved from Rulezet.


Related by attack behaviour

Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.