brace-expansion DoS via unbounded expansion length causing an out-of-memory process crash (juliangruber brace-expansion)
At a glance
- Source
- NVD
- EPSS
- EPSS 0.64 % · percentile 51 ()
- State
- PUBLISHED
- Published
- Updated
- Assigner
- seal
- NVD status
- Analyzed
Description
brace-expansion through 5.0.7 is vulnerable to denial of service via memory exhaustion. The expand() function limits the number of results with a max option (default 100,000) but does not bound the length of each result string. By chaining multiple brace groups, an attacker keeps the result count under the limit while making each result progressively longer, so total memory scales with both count and string length until the process hits a fatal, uncatchable out-of-memory error. About 7.5 KB of input ('{a,b}'.repeat(1500)) crashes a default Node.js process. Any application that passes attacker-influenced strings to brace-expansion.expand() - directly or transitively via minimatch / glob brace patterns - can be crashed by a small request. Fixed in 5.0.8 by adding a maxLength option (default 4,000,000) that bounds accumulated output and intermediate arrays.
Weaknesses (CWE)
- CWE-400 — Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- CWE-770 — Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
References
Scores
| Version | Score | Vector | Scored by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CVSS 3.1 | HIGH 7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H | seal |
| CVSS 3.1 | HIGH 7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H | NVD · 22e2d327-25fe-45d7-9f0c-dcd23b7108df (Secondary) |
Advisories
- GHSA-mh99-v99m-4gvg — brace-expansion: DoS via unbounded expansion length causing an out-of-memory process crash
European references
- ENISA EUVD · EUVD-2026-48285
- GCVE · GCVE-0-2026-14257
CERT-FR advisories
- CERTFR-2026-AVI-1385 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans les produits VMware · cert.ssi.gouv.fr
- CERTFR-2026-AVI-1366 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans les produits Splunk · cert.ssi.gouv.fr
- CERTFR-2026-AVI-1256 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans les produits IBM · cert.ssi.gouv.fr
- CERTFR-2026-AVI-1249 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans les produits VMware · cert.ssi.gouv.fr
- CERTFR-2026-AVI-1233 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans les produits IBM · cert.ssi.gouv.fr
- CERTFR-2026-AVI-1206 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans les produits IBM · cert.ssi.gouv.fr
- CERTFR-2026-AVI-1165 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans les produits IBM · cert.ssi.gouv.fr
Affected configurations (NVD CPE)
cpe:2.3:a:juliangruber:brace-expansion:*:*:*:*:*:node.js:*:*< 1.1.17cpe:2.3:a:juliangruber:brace-expansion:*:*:*:*:*:node.js:*:*≥ 2.0.0 < 2.1.3cpe:2.3:a:juliangruber:brace-expansion:*:*:*:*:*:node.js:*:*≥ 3.0.0 < 3.0.3cpe:2.3:a:juliangruber:brace-expansion:*:*:*:*:*:node.js:*:*≥ 4.0.0 < 5.0.8
Affected products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
| juliangruber · brace-expansion | affected 0 ≤ 5.0.7 |
Sources
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5) | CVE Program Terms of Use |
| EPSS (FIRST.org) | FIRST — attribution requested |
| ENISA EUVD | ENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged |
| CERT-FR (ANSSI) | Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0 |
| NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feeds | Public domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD |