CVE-2026-9496
Description
A flaw was found in the pacote component. A remote attacker can exploit this denial of service (DoS) vulnerability by providing a specially crafted input to the addGitSha function. This malicious input triggers excessive CPU consumption due to regex replacement and string manipulation, which can lead to the process stalling or crashing.
Statement
A flaw was found in the pacote npm package. Pacote retrieves package metadata and archives from npm registries, Git repositories, and other sources. In affected versions, the addGitSha function strips Git committish information from a package specification using a regular expression that is vulnerable to inefficient backtracking. An attacker who can supply a crafted spec.rawSpec value can cause the Node.js process that calls pacote to consume excessive CPU and become unresponsive, resulting in denial of service.
Red Hat products that include pacote versions from 11.2.7 up to (but not including) 21.5.1 may be affected when Node.js workloads process package specifications through pacote or through npm operations that depend on pacote. The impact is limited to the Node.js process performing that work; host operating systems are not directly affected.
Mitigation
To mitigate this limit the length of incoming package specifiers (spec.rawSpec) before they reach the resolution service. Enforce hard CPU time limits or timeouts on isolated build jobs and package resolution processes.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 7.5 | N/A | 7.5 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | None | N/A | None |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | None | N/A | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | N/A | None |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H/E:P
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)
Attackers can create crafted inputs that intentionally cause the regular expression to use excessive backtracking in a way that causes the CPU consumption to spike.
Frequently Asked Questions
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