What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-27904: minimatch ReDoS: nested *() extglobs generate catastrophically backtracking regular expressions
- Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2026-02-26 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-1333
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.
Affected products
- isaacs minimatch: before 3.1.4; from 4.0.0 before 4.2.5; from 5.0.0 before 5.1.8; from 6.0.0 before 6.2.2; from 7.0.0 before 7.4.8; from 8.0.0 before 8.0.6 — fixed in 10.2.3, 3.1.4, 4.2.5, 5.1.8, 6.2.2, 7.4.8
- Npm Minimatch: from 10.0.0 before 10.2.3; from 9.0.0 before 9.0.7; from 8.0.0 before 8.0.6; from 7.0.0 before 7.4.8; from 6.0.0 before 6.2.2; from 5.0.0 before 5.1.8 — fixed in 10.2.3, 9.0.7, 8.0.6, 7.4.8, 6.2.2, 5.1.8
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: isaacs minimatch 10.2.3, 3.1.4, 4.2.5, 5.1.8; Npm Minimatch 10.2.3, 9.0.7, 8.0.6, 7.4.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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