CVE-2026-26996: Minimatch Denial of Service Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-3ppc-4f35-3m26",
  "modified" : "2026-02-24T20:59:57Z",
  "published" : "2026-02-18T22:38:11Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2026-26996" ],
  "summary" : "minimatch has a ReDoS via repeated wildcards with non-matching literal in pattern",
  "details" : "### Summary\n`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.\n\nThe 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.\n\n\n### Details\n_Give all details on the vulnerability. Pointing to the incriminated source code is very helpful for the maintainer._\n\n### PoC\nWhen minimatch compiles a glob pattern, each `*` becomes `[^/]*?` in the generated regex. For a pattern like `***************X***`:\n\n```\n/^(?!\\.)[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?X[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?$/\n```\n\nWhen 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.\n### Impact\nAny application that passes user-controlled strings to `minimatch()` as the pattern argument is vulnerable to DoS. This includes:\n- File search/filter UIs that accept glob patterns\n- `.gitignore`-style filtering with user-defined rules\n- Build tools that accept glob configuration\n- Any API that exposes glob matching to untrusted input\n\n----\n\nThanks to @ljharb for back-porting the fix to legacy versions of minimatch.",
  "severity" : [ {
    "type" : "CVSS_V4",
    "score" : "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"
  } ],
  "affected" : [ {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "minimatch"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "10.0.0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "10.2.1"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "minimatch"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "9.0.0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "9.0.6"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "minimatch"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "8.0.0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "8.0.5"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "minimatch"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "7.0.0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "7.4.7"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "minimatch"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "6.0.0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "6.2.1"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "minimatch"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "5.0.0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "5.1.7"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "minimatch"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "4.0.0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "4.2.4"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "minimatch"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "3.1.3"
      } ]
    } ]
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/isaacs/minimatch/security/advisories/GHSA-3ppc-4f35-3m26"
  }, {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-26996"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/isaacs/minimatch/commit/2e111f3a79abc00fa73110195de2c0f2351904f5"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/isaacs/minimatch"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-1333" ],
    "severity" : "HIGH",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2026-02-18T22:38:11Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : "2026-02-20T03:16:01Z"
  }
}