CVE-2026-27904

minimatch ReDoS: nested *() extglobs generate catastrophically backtracking regular expressions

At a glance

Severity
HIGH 7.5
EPSS
EPSS 0.53 % · percentile 44 (2026-10-27)
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
GitHub_M
NVD status
Analyzed

Description

minimatch is a minimal matching utility for converting glob expressions into JavaScript RegExp objects. Prior to version 10.2.3, 9.0.7, 8.0.6, 7.4.8, 6.2.2, 5.1.8, 4.2.5, and 3.1.4, nested `*()` extglobs produce regexps with nested unbounded quantifiers (e.g. `(?:(?:a|b)*)*`), which exhibit catastrophic backtracking in V8. With a 12-byte pattern `*(*(*(a|b)))` and an 18-byte non-matching input, `minimatch()` stalls for over 7 seconds. Adding a single nesting level or a few input characters pushes this to minutes. This is the most severe finding: it is triggered by the default `minimatch()` API with no special options, and the minimum viable pattern is only 12 bytes. The same issue affects `+()` extglobs equally. Versions 10.2.3, 9.0.7, 8.0.6, 7.4.8, 6.2.2, 5.1.8, 4.2.5, and 3.1.4 fix the issue.

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HGitHub_M
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HNVD · security-advisories@github.com (Secondary)

Weaknesses (CWE)

Advisories

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
isaacs · minimatchaffected >= 10.0.0, < 10.2.3 ; affected >= 9.0.0, < 9.0.7 ; affected >= 8.0.0, < 8.0.6 ; affected >= 7.0.0, < 7.4.8 ; affected >= 6.0.0, < 6.2.2 ; affected >= 5.0.0, < 5.1.8

References

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD