CVE-2026-32256 — music-metadata
HIGHCVE-2026-32256 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-835 vulnerability in music-metadata. A fix is available for music-metadata — see the affected versions and patch details below.
music-metadata has an infinite loop vulnerability in ASF parser
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-2026-32256.
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.
music-metadatanpmDescription
Summary
music-metadata's ASF parser (parseExtensionObject() in lib/asf/AsfParser.ts:112-158) enters an infinite loop when a sub-object inside the ASF Header Extension Object has objectSize = 0.
Root Cause
When objectSize is 0:
remaining = 0 - 24 = -24tokenizer.ignore(-24)moves the read position backward by 24 bytesextensionSize -= 0(loop counter never decreases)while (extensionSize > 0)never exits- The same 24-byte header is re-read infinitely
This is the same pattern as CVE-2026-31808 (GHSA-5v7r-6r5c-r473) in file-type — strtok3's AbstractTokenizer.ignore() accepts negative values without validation.
Affected Methods
parseFile()— HANGS (FileTokenizer inherits vulnerable ignore())parseBuffer()— HANGS (BufferTokenizer inherits vulnerable ignore())parseStream()— NOT affected (ReadStreamTokenizer has own ignore() that throws RangeError)
Impact
A 100-byte crafted .asf file permanently hangs any application using parseFile() or parseBuffer(). music-metadata has 2.2M weekly npm downloads.
Suggested Fix
Validate objectSize >= minimumHeaderSize before calculating the payload. Or fix strtok3's AbstractTokenizer.ignore() to reject negative values.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | music-metadata | all versions | 11.12.3npm install music-metadata@11.12.3 |
Affected Products
music-metadataborewitDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for music-metadata, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update music-metadata to 11.12.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-32256 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-2026-32256 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.