CVE-2026-104844

PostCSS: Quadratic complexity in flat selector parsing allows CPU exhaustion

MEDIUM
5.9
CVSS Score
Published: October 2, 2026 at 03:43 PM UTC
Updated: October 2, 2026 at 06:44 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorPostCSS Selector Parser

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Severity
MEDIUM5.9
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.4%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

PostCSS Selector Parser is a CSS selector parser that integrates with PostCSS but does not require it. Prior to 7.1.6, src/parser.js splitWord() can receive a flat selector as one word token carrying many class or ID indexes because period and hash characters are not tokenizer word delimiters. The uniqs() deduplication and per-index class and ID membership checks repeatedly scan the class and ID index arrays, while a separate Sass-interpolation filtering pass also performs repeated linear scanning. Together, these passes make parsing quadratic in the number of indexes and allow a crafted selector to occupy a synchronous parser thread. The maxNestingDepth guard does not mitigate the issue because the hostile selector can have zero nesting depth. Only consumers that synchronously parse untrusted selectors in an exposed request path are affected; ordinary build-time parsing of trusted sources is not affected. This issue is fixed in version 7.1.6.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 7.1.6
Affected range stops below 7.1.6, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

5.9MEDIUMGitHub_M
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
HIGH
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusAWAITING ANALYSIS
CWE
CWE-400CWE-407

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