CVE-2026-104844: PostCSS · Quadratic complexity in flat selector parsing allows CPU exhaustion
Affects postcss-selector-parserSource GCVE Database
Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.9 Medium : upgrade to 7.1.6 when convenient.
Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 17:16 UTC
- EPSS
- 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 32% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
- Patch
- Available – fixed in 7.1.6, 6.1.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HExploitation evidence
Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 2 Oct 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors
A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.
What to do
Upgrade postcss-selector-parser to 7.1.6; postcss-selector-parser to 6.1.5.
Affected software
| Product | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| npmpostcss-selector-parser | Affected
| Fixed in
|
| npmpostcss-selector-parser | Affected
| Fixed in
|
Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.
Description
### Impact `.` and `#` are not word delimiters in the tokenizer, so a flat selector such as `.a.a.a...` reaches `splitWord()` as a single word token carrying n class or id indexes. Three passes scanned those index arrays linearly for every index, making the parse O(n^2) in the number of indexes rather than in input length: `uniqs()`, the `indices.forEach` loop, and the Sass-interpolation filter. Parsing a 400 KB flat selector took ~34 s on a modern laptop, fully occupying a single thread. A benign selector of identical byte size parses in tens of milliseconds, so the cost is driven by the index count, not the input size. The nesting depth of such a selector is 0, so the `maxNestingDepth` guard added in 7.1.3 offers no protection. Reachability is deployment dependent. Only consumers that parse untrusted, attacker-supplied selectors synchronously in a request path are exposed, for example CSS sanitizers, CSS-in-JS services and online playgrounds. Ordinary build-time use on trusted sources is not affected. ### Patches Fixed in 7.1.6. The three passes now use Set membership tests, making parsing linear in the number of indexes. There is no behaviour change: parsing is byte-identical on a differential corpus of 8413 selectors. ### Workarounds Cap the size of selectors accepted from untrusted sources before parsing.
References
- github.com/postcss/postcss-selector-parser/security/advisories/GHSA-rj75-hqrm-r3gf (opens in a new tab)
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-104844 (opens in a new tab)
- github.com/postcss/postcss-selector-parser/pull/346 (opens in a new tab)
- github.com/postcss/postcss-selector-parser/commit/62b191792df0a0bc56062e5a875bc74aae2a51cd (opens in a new tab)
- github.com/postcss/postcss-selector-parser/commit/70b0779c843462197380d25daa02d1528bf7eae5 (opens in a new tab)
- github.com/postcss/postcss-selector-parser (opens in a new tab)
- github.com/postcss/postcss-selector-parser/releases/tag/6.1.5 (opens in a new tab)
- github.com/postcss/postcss-selector-parser/releases/tag/7.1.6 (opens in a new tab)