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Fencer Intel
medium 6.2

CVE-2026-68499 json

re2: Global `String.prototype.match` with an empty-matchable pattern never advances → infinite loop with unbounded native memory growth (DoS)

published 4mo ago modified 19d ago also EUVD-2026-51298 , GHSA-6hxr-mr5r-9836

cvss
6.2
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

re2 provides Node.js bindings for Google's RE2 regular expression engine. Prior to 1.25.2, re2's String.prototype.match implementation with a global RE2 pattern that can match the empty string fails to advance its native matching cursor in lib/match.cc, causing an infinite loop and unbounded native memory growth that blocks the event loop and can exhaust host memory. This issue is fixed in 1.25.2.

Patch / fix

  • npm re2 1.25.2
  • node-re2 Debian 14 1.26.1+~cs1.7.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-68499

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-68499 updated cvss 6.2

node-re2: Denial of Service via improper handling of empty-matchable regular expressions

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
3mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/uhop/node-re2/security/advisories/GHSA-6hxr-mr5r-9836 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
GitHub 3.1 6.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm re2
<1.25.2
1.25.2

Affected products

  • uhop node-re2

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-835 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of uhop/node-re2 published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.