Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity in shell-quote - CVE-2026-13311
Published: July 28, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU139892
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 8.7 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-13311
CWE-ID: CWE-407
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service.
The vulnerability exists due to inefficient algorithmic complexity in the parse() function when parsing attacker-supplied strings. A remote attacker can submit a specially crafted input string to cause a denial of service.
The issue blocks the single-threaded Node.js event loop, and plain space-separated words are sufficient to trigger the vulnerable behavior.
Affected software
shell-quote
Debian Linux
node-shell-quote (Debian package)
Debian Linux
node-shell-quote (Debian package)
How to mitigate CVE-2026-13311
Install security update from vendor's website.
shell-quote - update to 1.9.0
node-shell-quote (Debian package) - update to 1.7.4+~1.7.1-1+deb13u2
node-shell-quote (Debian package) - update to 1.7.4+~1.7.1-1+deb13u2