Medium [CVE-2026-13311] Denial of Service due to inefficient input parsing

shell-quote prior to 1.8.5 finalizes parsed tokens in parse() using Array.prototype.concat as a reduce accumulator, which reallocates and copies the entire growing array on every iteration. As a result parse() runs in O(n^2) time relative to the number of input tokens.

An attacker who can supply an attacker-controlled string to any code path that calls parse() (no shell metacharacters are required; plain space-separated words suffice) can block the single-threaded Node.js event loop for an extended period with a small input, resulting in a denial of service.

There is no code execution or data disclosure; impact is to availability only. Fixed in 1.8.5.

An attacker who can supply a specially crafted string to the `parse()` function can exploit an inefficiency in how the component processes input. A flaw was found in the shell-quote npm package's `parse()` function, which uses an `O(n²)` array concatenation pattern when processing tokens.

The vulnerable `parse()` function is not typically exposed to external user input in Red Hat product deployments, reducing the practical exploitability of this flaw. Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 6.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

Weakness: CWE-1050.

Affected products named by the advisory: Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.4; Cryostat 4; Gatekeeper 3; Migration Toolkit for Containers; and 22 more.