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  5. CVE-2026-26996

CVE-2026-26996: minimatch has a ReDoS via repeated wildcards with non-matching literal in pattern

February 18, 2026 (updated February 24, 2026)

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.

References

  • github.com/advisories/GHSA-3ppc-4f35-3m26
  • github.com/isaacs/minimatch
  • github.com/isaacs/minimatch/commit/2e111f3a79abc00fa73110195de2c0f2351904f5
  • github.com/isaacs/minimatch/security/advisories/GHSA-3ppc-4f35-3m26
  • nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-26996

Code Behaviors & Features

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Affected versions

All versions before 3.1.3, all versions starting from 4.0.0 before 4.2.4, all versions starting from 5.0.0 before 5.1.7, all versions starting from 6.0.0 before 6.2.1, all versions starting from 7.0.0 before 7.4.7, all versions starting from 8.0.0 before 8.0.5, all versions starting from 9.0.0 before 9.0.6, all versions starting from 10.0.0 before 10.2.1

Fixed versions

  • 10.2.1
  • 9.0.6
  • 8.0.5
  • 7.4.7
  • 6.2.1
  • 5.1.7
  • 4.2.4
  • 3.1.3

Solution

Upgrade to versions 10.2.1, 3.1.3, 4.2.4, 5.1.7, 6.2.1, 7.4.7, 8.0.5, 9.0.6 or above.

Impact 7.5 HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Learn more about CVSS

Weakness

  • CWE-1333: Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

Source file

npm/minimatch/CVE-2026-26996.yml

Spotted a mistake? Edit the file on GitLab.

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