How severe is CVE-2026-26996?

No CVSS score has been assigned to CVE-2026-26996 yet. Review the advisory details and affected package list to assess your exposure.

Which packages are affected by CVE-2026-26996?

CVE-2026-26996 affects the following packages: minimatch (npm), minimatch (npm), minimatch (npm), minimatch (npm), minimatch (npm), minimatch (npm), minimatch (npm), minimatch (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix CVE-2026-26996?

Update minimatch to 10.2.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-26996 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect CVE-2026-26996 in my npm dependencies?

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.

How do I mitigate CVE-2026-26996 if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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.

Is CVE-2026-26996 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for CVE-2026-26996 yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for CVE-2026-26996?

CVE-2026-26996 has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 0.6%, placing it in the 48th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is CVE-2026-26996?

CVE-2026-26996 is classified as CWE-1333 (CWE-1333). This weakness type describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation.

When was CVE-2026-26996 published, and has it been updated?

CVE-2026-26996 was published on February 20, 2026 and was last updated on October 28, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

📦 npm

Not in CISA KEV

CVE-2026-26996 — minimatch

Fix: isaacs/minimatch@2e111f3

CVE-2026-26996 is a CWE-1333 vulnerability in minimatch. A fix is available for minimatch — see the affected versions and patch details below.

minimatch has a ReDoS via repeated wildcards with non-matching literal in pattern

Also known asGHSA-3ppc-4f35-3m26

Published

Feb 20, 2026

Updated

Oct 28, 2026

Affected

8 pkgs

Patched

8 / 8

Exploits

None indexed

Exploitation data as of Nov 7, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

No confirmed exploitation observed yet

CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-26996.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

0.6%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk0.00%

Lower risk than most CVEs48th percentile — riskier than 48% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

Real-World Exposure

8 pkgs affected

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.

13Kother npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream

minimatchnpm

962.4Mdownloads / week

Description

Summary

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.

Details

Give all details on the vulnerability. Pointing to the incriminated source code is very helpful for the maintainer.

PoC

When minimatch compiles a glob pattern, each * becomes [^/]*? in the generated regex. For a pattern like ***************X***:

/^(?!\.)[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?X[^/]*?[^/]*?[^/]*?$/

When 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.

Impact

Any application that passes user-controlled strings to minimatch() as the pattern argument is vulnerable to DoS. This includes:

File search/filter UIs that accept glob patterns
.gitignore-style filtering with user-defined rules
Build tools that accept glob configuration
Any API that exposes glob matching to untrusted input

Thanks to @ljharb for back-porting the fix to legacy versions of minimatch.

Affected Packages

8 total 8 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`minimatch`	≥ 10.0.0&&< 10.2.1	10.2.1`npm install minimatch@10.2.1`
📦npm	`minimatch`	≥ 9.0.0&&< 9.0.6	9.0.6`npm install minimatch@9.0.6`
📦npm	`minimatch`	≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.0.5	8.0.5`npm install minimatch@8.0.5`
📦npm	`minimatch`	≥ 7.0.0&&< 7.4.7	7.4.7`npm install minimatch@7.4.7`
📦npm	`minimatch`	≥ 6.0.0&&< 6.2.1	6.2.1`npm install minimatch@6.2.1`
📦npm	`minimatch`	≥ 5.0.0&&< 5.1.7	5.1.7`npm install minimatch@5.1.7`

Affected Products

1 product · 8 configurations

Application

minimatchminimatch_project

≥ 10.0.0 && < 10.2.1

range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
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 10.2.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-26996 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.

Fixing This On Your OS

If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.

Red HatModerate

Exploitation of this flaw requires that a user or service processes untrusted input.

Product	Fixed in	Advisory
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 for RHEL 8	`automation-gateway-0:2.5.20260422-3.el8ap`	RHSA-2026:24761
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 for RHEL 9	`automation-platform-ui-0:2.6.8-1.el9ap`	RHSA-2026:13508
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10	`nodejs22-1:22.22.2-1.el10_1`	RHSA-2026:7080
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10	`nodejs24-1:24.14.1-2.el10_1`	RHSA-2026:7675
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 Extended Update Support	`nodejs22-1:22.22.2-2.el10_0`	RHSA-2026:7310
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	`nodejs:22-8100020260331102257.6d880403`	RHSA-2026:7123
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	`nodejs:24-8100020260408131901.6d880403`	RHSA-2026:7670
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	`nodejs:20-8100020260414073138.489197e6`	RHSA-2026:8339

Frequently Asked Questions

### Summary `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. ### Details _Give all details on the vulnerability. Pointin