When using multiple wildcards, combined with at least one parameter, a regular expression can be generated that is vulnerable to ReDoS. This backtracking vulnerability requires the second wildcard to be somewhere other than the end of the path. Unsafe examples: /*foo-*bar-:baz /*a-:b-*c-:d /x/*a-:b/*c/y Safe examples: /*foo-:bar /*foo-:bar-*baz
A bad regular expression is generated any time you have three or more parameters within a single segment, separated by something that is not a period (.). For example, /:a-:b-:c or /:a-:b-:c-:d. The backtrack protection added in path-to-regexp@0.1.12 only prevents ambiguity for two parameters. With three or more, the generated lookahead does not block single separator characters, so capture groups overlap and cause catastrophic backtracking.
A bad regular expression is generated any time you have multiple sequential optional groups (curly brace syntax), such as {a}{b}{c}:z. The generated regex grows exponentially with the number of groups, causing denial of service.
The regular expression that is vulnerable to backtracking can be generated in versions before 0.1.12 of path-to-regexp, originally reported in CVE-2024-45296
A bad regular expression is generated any time you have two parameters within a single segment, separated by something that is not a period (.). For example, /:a-:b.