CVE-2026-69152 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in brace-expansion. A fix is available for brace-expansion — see the affected versions and patch details below.
brace-expansion: DoS via unbounded intermediate arrays, bypassing the CVE-2026-14257 mitigation
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-69152.
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.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-69152 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 374,847 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
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.
brace-expansionnpmDescription
The brace-expansion library generates arbitrary strings containing a common prefix and suffix. Prior to 1.1.18, 2.1.4, 3.0.6, and 5.0.9, expand() does not apply maxLength while constructing comma-alternative intermediate arrays or padded sequences, allowing attacker-controlled input to exhaust memory or block the event loop. The fix for CVE-2026-14257 is bypassed by the vulnerability. This issue is fixed in versions 1.1.18, 2.1.4, 3.0.6, and 5.0.9.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | brace-expansion | all versions | 1.1.18npm install brace-expansion@1.1.18 |
| 📦npm | brace-expansion | ≥ 2.0.0&&< 2.1.4 | 2.1.4npm install brace-expansion@2.1.4 |
| 📦npm | brace-expansion | ≥ 3.0.0&&< 3.0.6 | 3.0.6npm install brace-expansion@3.0.6 |
| 📦npm | brace-expansion | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 5.0.9 | 5.0.9npm install brace-expansion@5.0.9 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for brace-expansion, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update brace-expansion to 1.1.18 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-69152 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-2026-69152 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-69152. 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.
Any applications that pass user-controlled input to the `expand()` function are vulnerable to this issue. This flaw can result in an excessive consumption of memory that eventually terminates the process or blocks the event loop, both causing a denial of service. As this vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Cryostat 4 on RHEL 9 | cryostat/cryostat-grafana-dashboard-rhel9:4.2.0-14 | RHSA-2026:68333 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | nodejs-nodemon-0:3.1.14-3.el10_2 | RHSA-2026:52841 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | nodejs22-1:22.23.1-6.el10_2 | RHSA-2026:55541 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | rh-podman-desktop-0:1.1.2-1.el10_2 | RHSA-2026:57590 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | nodejs24-1:24.18.0-5.el10_2 | RHSA-2026:58819 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 Extended Update Support | nodejs-nodemon-0:3.1.14-3.el10_0 | RHSA-2026:61374 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 Extended Update Support | nodejs22-1:22.23.2-1.el10_0 | RHSA-2026:64817 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | nodejs:24-8100020260807112957.6d880403 | RHSA-2026:54371 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-69152 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-69152 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.