CVE-2026-83606

xmldom PI grammar regex ReDoS: quadratic backtracking on unterminated processing instructions

HIGH
8.7
CVSS Score
Published: September 1, 2026 at 02:21 PM UTC
Updated: September 8, 2026 at 09:29 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendor@xmldom

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Severity
HIGH8.7
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.5%
SSVC
PoC

Description

xmldom is a pure JavaScript W3C standard-based (XML DOM Level 2 Core) DOMParser and XMLSerializer module. From 0.9.0-beta.9 until 0.9.11, the processing-instruction production in lib/grammar.js lets the greedy S+ separator and lazy Char*? data group repeatedly repartition a long whitespace tail when the required closing ?> is absent. Both parsePI and parseProcessingInstruction apply the expression to the entire remaining source, causing quadratic backtracking during DOMParser.parseFromString() under default options and allowing a small unauthenticated XML input to stall the Node.js event loop. This issue is fixed in @xmldom/xmldom version 0.9.11.

Affected

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

v < 0.9.11
Affected range stops below 0.9.11, 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

SSVCPoCAutomatablePartial impact

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

CVSS

8.7HIGHGitHub_M
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusDEFERRED
CWE
CWE-400CWE-1333

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