Medium [CVE-2026-13311] Denial of Service due to inefficient input parsing
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-13311 affecting Cryostat 4, Gatekeeper 3, Migration Toolkit for Containers.
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Summary
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: Cryostat 4; Gatekeeper 3; Migration Toolkit for Containers; Node HealthCheck Operator; and 24 more.
- < 1.8.5
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 12 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation checklist
- Upgrade shell-quote to version 1.8.5. If upgrading shell-quote to version 1.8.5 or later is not immediately possible, the following mitigations can reduce exposure: 1. Validate and limit the length of any user-controlled strings before passing them to shell-quote's `parse()` function. 2. If `parse()` is not required, ensure that only the `quote()` function is used, as it is not affected by this vulnerability.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 12 days ago·verify at source
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