CVE-2026-25547: @isaacs/brace expansion Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-7h2j-956f-4vf2",
  "modified" : "2026-02-05T00:36:54Z",
  "published" : "2026-02-03T19:41:15Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2026-25547" ],
  "summary" : "@isaacs/brace-expansion has Uncontrolled Resource Consumption",
  "details" : "### Summary\n\n`@isaacs/brace-expansion` is vulnerable to a Denial of Service (DoS) issue caused by unbounded brace range expansion. When an attacker provides a pattern containing repeated numeric brace ranges, the library attempts to eagerly generate every possible combination synchronously. Because the expansion grows exponentially, even a small input can consume excessive CPU and memory and may crash the Node.js process.\n\n### Details\n\nThe vulnerability occurs because `@isaacs/brace-expansion` expands brace expressions without any upper bound or complexity limit. Expansion is performed eagerly and synchronously, meaning the full result set is generated before returning control to the caller.\n\nFor example, the following input:\n\n```\n{0..99}{0..99}{0..99}{0..99}{0..99}\n```\n\nproduces:\n\n```\n100^5 = 10,000,000,000 combinations\n```\n\nThis exponential growth can quickly overwhelm the event loop and heap memory, resulting in process termination.\n\n### Proof of Concept\n\nThe following script reliably triggers the issue.\n\nCreate `poc.js`:\n\n```js\nconst { expand } = require('@isaacs/brace-expansion');\n\nconst pattern = '{0..99}{0..99}{0..99}{0..99}{0..99}';\n\nconsole.log('Starting expansion...');\nexpand(pattern);\n```\n\nRun it:\n\n```bash\nnode poc.js\n```\n\nThe process will freeze and typically crash with an error such as:\n\n```\nFATAL ERROR: JavaScript heap out of memory\n```\n\n### Impact\n\nThis is a denial of service vulnerability. Any application or downstream dependency that uses `@isaacs/brace-expansion` on untrusted input may be vulnerable to a single-request crash.\n\nAn attacker does not require authentication and can use a very small payload to:\n\n* Trigger exponential computation\n* Exhaust memory and CPU resources\n* Block the event loop\n* Crash Node.js services relying on this library",
  "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" : "@isaacs/brace-expansion"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "5.0.1"
      } ]
    } ],
    "database_specific" : {
      "last_known_affected_version_range" : "<= 5.0.0"
    }
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/isaacs/brace-expansion/security/advisories/GHSA-7h2j-956f-4vf2"
  }, {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-25547"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/isaacs/brace-expansion"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-1333" ],
    "severity" : "HIGH",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2026-02-03T19:41:15Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : "2026-02-04T22:16:00Z"
  }
}