minimatch has a ReDoS via repeated wildcards with non-matching literal in pattern
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
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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.
Software afectado
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| Plataforma | Paquete | Versiones vulnerables | Corregida en |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paquete de npm | minimatch | >= 10.0.0, < 10.2.1, >= 9.0.0, < 9.0.6, >= 8.0.0, < 8.0.5, >= 7.0.0, < 7.4.7, >= 6.0.0, < 6.2.1, >= 5.0.0, < 5.1.7, >= 4.0.0, < 4.2.4, < 3.1.3 | 10.2.1, 9.0.6, 8.0.5, 7.4.7, 6.2.1, 5.1.7, 4.2.4, 3.1.3 |
Referencias
- Vector CVSS
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- Debilidad (CWE)
CWE-1333- Plataforma
- npm
- Paquete
minimatch- Publicada
- 18.02.2026
- Actualizado
- 11.10.2026 10:22
Fuentes y licencias
OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-3ppc-4f35-3m26 - CC BY 4.0
Historial de vulnerabilidades: minimatch
Todas las vulnerabilidades publicadas de este paquete (Paquete de npm), de la más reciente a la más antigua. Muestra si es un fallo aislado o un paquete que hay que vigilar.
- Entradas en total
- 5
- Primera → última
- 10.2018 02.2026
- Sin corrección
- 0
- Explotada en ataques
- 0
Distribución por gravedad
- Alta 5
Divulgaciones por año
- 2018: 1
- 2019: 0
- 2020: 0
- 2021: 0
- 2022: 1
- 2023: 0
- 2024: 0
- 2025: 0
- 2026: 3
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