CVE-2026-26996 Vulnerability Analysis & Exploit Details

CVE-2026-26996
Vulnerability Scoring

Analysis In Progress
Analysis In Progress

Attack Complexity Details

  • Attack Complexity:
    Attack Complexity Analysis In Progress
  • Attack Vector:
    Attack Vector Under Analysis
  • Privileges Required: None
    No authentication is required for exploitation.
  • Scope:
    Impact is confined to the initially vulnerable component.
  • User Interaction: None
    No user interaction is necessary for exploitation.

CVE-2026-26996 Details

Status: Received on 20 Feb 2026, 03:16 UTC

Published on: 20 Feb 2026, 03:16 UTC

CVSS Release:

CVE-2026-26996 Vulnerability Summary

CVE-2026-26996: minimatch is a minimal matching utility for converting glob expressions into JavaScript RegExp objects. Versions 10.2.0 and below are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) when a glob pattern contains many consecutive * wildcards followed by a literal character that doesn't appear in the test string. Each * compiles to a separate [^/]*? regex group, and when the match fails, V8's regex engine backtracks exponentially across all possible splits. The time complexity is O(4^N) where N is the number of * characters. With N=15, a single minimatch() call takes ~2 seconds. With N=34, it hangs effectively forever. Any application that passes user-controlled strings to minimatch() as the pattern argument is vulnerable to DoS. This issue has been fixed in version 10.2.1.

Assessing the Risk of CVE-2026-26996

Access Complexity Graph

The exploitability of CVE-2026-26996 depends on two key factors: attack complexity (the level of effort required to execute an exploit) and privileges required (the access level an attacker needs).

Exploitability Analysis for CVE-2026-26996

No exploitability data is available for CVE-2026-26996.

Understanding AC and PR

A lower complexity and fewer privilege requirements make exploitation easier. Security teams should evaluate these aspects to determine the urgency of mitigation strategies, such as patch management and access control policies.

Attack Complexity (AC) measures the difficulty in executing an exploit. A high AC means that specific conditions must be met, making an attack more challenging, while a low AC means the vulnerability can be exploited with minimal effort.

Privileges Required (PR) determine the level of system access necessary for an attack. Vulnerabilities requiring no privileges are more accessible to attackers, whereas high privilege requirements limit exploitation to authorized users with elevated access.

CVSS Score Breakdown Chart

Above is the CVSS Sub-score Breakdown for CVE-2026-26996, illustrating how Base, Impact, and Exploitability factors combine to form the overall severity rating. A higher sub-score typically indicates a more severe or easier-to-exploit vulnerability.

CIA Impact Analysis

Below is the Impact Analysis for CVE-2026-26996, showing how Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability might be affected if the vulnerability is exploited. Higher values usually signal greater potential damage.

  • Confidentiality: None
    CVE-2026-26996 does not compromise confidentiality.
  • Integrity: None
    CVE-2026-26996 does not impact data integrity.
  • Availability: None
    CVE-2026-26996 does not affect system availability.

CVE-2026-26996 References

External References

CWE Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-1333

CAPEC Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification

  • Regular Expression Exponential Blowup CAPEC-492 An adversary may execute an attack on a program that uses a poor Regular Expression(Regex) implementation by choosing input that results in an extreme situation for the Regex. A typical extreme situation operates at exponential time compared to the input size. This is due to most implementations using a Nondeterministic Finite Automaton(NFA) state machine to be built by the Regex algorithm since NFA allows backtracking and thus more complex regular expressions.

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