CVE-2026-33672 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-1321 vulnerability in picomatch. A fix is available for picomatch — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Picomatch: Method Injection in POSIX Character Classes causes incorrect Glob Matching
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-2026-33672.
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.
picomatchnpmDescription
Impact
picomatch is vulnerable to a method injection vulnerability (CWE-1321) affecting the POSIX_REGEX_SOURCE object. Because the object inherits from Object.prototype, specially crafted POSIX bracket expressions (e.g., [[:constructor:]]) can reference inherited method names. These methods are implicitly converted to strings and injected into the generated regular expression.
This leads to incorrect glob matching behavior (integrity impact), where patterns may match unintended filenames. The issue does not enable remote code execution, but it can cause security-relevant logic errors in applications that rely on glob matching for filtering, validation, or access control.
All users of affected picomatch versions that process untrusted or user-controlled glob patterns are potentially impacted.
Patches
This issue is fixed in picomatch 4.0.4, 3.0.2 and 2.3.2.
Users should upgrade to one of these versions or later, depending on their supported release line.
Workarounds
If upgrading is not immediately possible, avoid passing untrusted glob patterns to picomatch.
Possible mitigations include:
-
Sanitizing or rejecting untrusted glob patterns, especially those containing POSIX character classes like
[[:...:]]. -
Avoiding the use of POSIX bracket expressions if user input is involved.
-
Manually patching the library by modifying
POSIX_REGEX_SOURCEto use a null prototype:const POSIX_REGEX_SOURCE = { __proto__: null, alnum: 'a-zA-Z0-9', alpha: 'a-zA-Z', // ... rest unchanged };
Resources
- fix for similar issue: https://github.com/micromatch/picomatch/pull/144
- picomatch repository https://github.com/micromatch/picomatch
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | picomatch | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 4.0.4 | 4.0.4npm install picomatch@4.0.4 |
| 📦npm | picomatch | ≥ 3.0.0&&< 3.0.2 | 3.0.2npm install picomatch@3.0.2 |
| 📦npm | picomatch | all versions | 2.3.2npm install picomatch@2.3.2 |
Affected Products
picomatchjonschlinkertDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for picomatch, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update picomatch to 4.0.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-33672 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.
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.
To mitigate this issue, applications should sanitize or reject untrusted glob patterns, particularly those containing POSIX character classes like `[[:...:]]`. Avoid using POSIX bracket expressions if user input is involved. No service restart or reload is typically required for this operational control, but applications should be re-evaluated to ensure proper input handling.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-33672 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 9.2 | rhceph/rhceph-9-rhel10:1790843527 | RHSA-2026:86618 |
| Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4.18 | odf4/cephcsi-rhel9:1786705347 | RHSA-2026:56431 |
| Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4.22 | odf4/cephcsi-rhel9:1787057250 | RHSA-2026:56928 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-33672 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.