brace-expansion: Quadratic-time expansion of the `{a},b}` rewrite causes CPU denial of service
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 5.0.12, 3.0.9, 2.1.7, 1.1.21
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: none
- Automatable: yes
- Technical impact: partial
Summary
The brace-expansion library generates arbitrary strings containing a common prefix and suffix. Prior to 1.1.21, 2.1.7, 3.0.9, and 5.0.12, the expand function handles untrusted {a},b}-shaped patterns with many trailing closing braces by restarting its scan once for each trailing closing brace. The successive full-input rescans with linear working-string growth cause quadratic CPU time and memory pressure that can block the Node.js event loop. The process eventually recovers, making the impact a recoverable CPU denial of service. This issue is fixed in versions 1.1.21, 2.1.7, 3.0.9, and 5.0.12.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- juliangruber brace-expansion
From 4.0.0 · fixed in 5.0.12; From 3.0.0 · fixed in 3.0.9; From 2.0.0 · fixed in 2.1.7; fixed in 1.1.21
- brace-expansionnpm
From 4.0.0 · fixed in 5.0.12
- brace-expansionnpm
From 3.0.0 · fixed in 3.0.9
- brace-expansionnpm
From 2.0.0 · fixed in 2.1.7
- brace-expansionnpm
fixed in 1.1.21