CVE-2026-26996 — minimatch
Fix: isaacs/minimatch@2e111f3CVE-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
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
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
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
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
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | minimatch | ≥ 10.0.0&&< 10.2.1 | 10.2.1npm install minimatch@10.2.1 |
| 📦npm | minimatch | ≥ 9.0.0&&< 9.0.6 | 9.0.6npm install minimatch@9.0.6 |
| 📦npm | minimatch | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.0.5 | 8.0.5npm install minimatch@8.0.5 |
| 📦npm | minimatch | ≥ 7.0.0&&< 7.4.7 | 7.4.7npm install minimatch@7.4.7 |
| 📦npm | minimatch | ≥ 6.0.0&&< 6.2.1 | 6.2.1npm install minimatch@6.2.1 |
| 📦npm | minimatch | ≥ 5.0.0&&< 5.1.7 | 5.1.7npm install minimatch@5.1.7 |
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 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
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2026-26996 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-26996. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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.
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
Is CVE-2026-26996 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-26996 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.