GHSA-g53g-w8rj-fmg7 xmldom PI grammar regex ReDoS: quadratic backtracking on unterminated processing instructions

• npm @xmldom/xmldom: >= 0.9.0-beta.9, < 0.9.11 → fixed in 0.9.11

Summary `@xmldom/xmldom`'s processing-instruction (PI) grammar regex exhibits quadratic-time backtracking (ReDoS) when parsing an unterminated processing instruction. A single small XML document containing `` forces the regular expression engine into O(n²) work, stalling the Node.js event loop. The input is parsed with `DOMParser.parseFromString` under default options, so it is reachable from unauthenticated, network-delivered XML (SOAP/SAML, webhooks, uploads, XML APIs). Details The PI production in `lib/grammar.js` compiles (flags `mu`) to: ``` ^ ^^^ S+ greedy ^^^ Char*? lazy ``` • `lib/grammar.js` line 261: https://github.com/xmldom/xmldom/blob/bb7a085dc5ba1eea3212388509b97bb4b4af32b9/lib/grammar.js#L261 In the optional tail `(?:S+(Char*?))?`, both the greedy separator `S+` and the lazy data `Char*?` match XML whitespace. When the required trailing `?>` is absent, the engine must ultimately fail — but first it tries every partition of the whitespace run between `S+` and `Char*?`, which is O(n²) in the length of the trailing whitespace. The regex is executed against the entire remaining source string in two places in `lib/sax.js`, so the whole whitespace tail is scanned: • `parsePI` — https://github.com/xmldom/xmldom/blob/bb7a085dc5ba1eea3212388509b97bb4b4af32b9/lib/sax.js#L680-L691 • `parseProcessingInstruction` — https://github.com/xmldom/xmldom/blob/bb7a085dc5ba1eea3212388509b97bb4b4af32b9/lib/sax.js#L862-L879 Affected Versions Only the `0.9.x` line is affected. `lib/grammar.js` (and this PI regex) was introduced in commit `726b471` ("fix!: preserve DOCTYPE internal subset (#498)"), first released in 0.9.0-beta.9, and is unchanged through 0.9.10. The `0.8.x` line (≤ 0.8.13) and the unscoped `xmldom` package (≤ 0.6.0) parse PIs via a different code path bounded by `indexOf('?>')` — they do not contain this regex and are not affected by this issue. (They were not separately tested for a *different* PI ReDoS; the scope here is the specific `grammar.js` regex.) | Line | PI code path | Affected? | |---|---|---| | `0.9.x` (0.9.0-beta.9 … 0.9.10) | `grammar.js` `PI` regex over full remaining source | Yes | | `0.8.x` (≤ 0.8.13) | `parseInstruction`, bounded by `indexOf('?>')` | No | | unscoped `xmldom` (≤ 0.6.0) | older `indexOf('?>')`-bounded parsing | No | Proof of Concept ```js const { DOMParser } = require('@xmldom/xmldom'); const n = 32 * 1024; const payload = '` console.time('parse'); new DOMParser().parseFromString(payload, 'text/xml'); console.timeEnd('parse'); ``` Measured (Node 18), trailing whitespace after `` — time quadruples per doubling of input length (canonical O(n²)): | Trailing whitespace | `g.PI.exec` | `parseFromString` | |---|---|---| | 2 KB | 4.4 ms | 5.1 ms | | 4 KB | 16.9 ms | 17.0 ms | | 8 KB | 111.4 ms | 66.3 ms | | 16 KB | 263.8 ms | 336.5 ms | | 32 KB | 1073.1 ms | — | Impact Availability only: a single parse of a small crafted document blocks the Node.js event loop for the duration of the quadratic scan (≈1 s at 32 KB; multi-second with larger inputs). No memory blow-up, no data exposure, no integrity impact. Because XML is routinely accepted from untrusted sources and parsed with default options, one request can stall a server. Fix Applied Fixed in `@xmldom/xmldom` 0.9.11 (`0.9.x`-only; the `0.8.x` LTS line and the unscoped `xmldom` package use a different, bounded PI code path and are not affected). PR #1039 inserts a fixed-width negative lookahead `(?!\s)` immediately after the greedy `S+`, so the separator can no longer hand whitespace back to the lazy data group: ``` • var PI = reg(/^/); + var PI = reg(/^/); ``` The change is correct, minimal, and behavior-preserving: it produces identical `[target, data]` captures on all valid PIs tested (incl. whitespace-heavy, tab/newline, empty-data, and xml-decl cases) and removes the backtracking blow-up (linear, ~0.4 ms at 128 KB after the fix). The lookahead is fixed-width and cannot itself backtrack — a strict improvement with no new parsing risk. Severity note The complexity is quadratic, not exponential, so a multi-second stall requires tens-to-hundreds of KB of input. `VA:H` reflects that xmldom applies no input-size limit and the path runs on default-options parsing, so a single unbounded parse can fully stall the event loop.