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Infinite loop in ASF parser on malformed input with zero-size sub-header

Moderate
sindresorhus published GHSA-5v7r-6r5c-r473 Mar 9, 2026

Package

npm file-type (npm)

Affected versions

<21.3.1,>=13.0.0

Patched versions

21.3.1

Description

Impact

A denial of service vulnerability exists in the ASF (WMV/WMA) file type detection parser. When parsing a crafted input where an ASF sub-header has a size field of zero, the parser enters an infinite loop. The payload value becomes negative (-24), causing tokenizer.ignore(payload) to move the read position backwards, so the same sub-header is read repeatedly forever.

Any application that uses file-type to detect the type of untrusted/attacker-controlled input is affected. An attacker can stall the Node.js event loop with a 55-byte payload.

Patches

Fixed in version 21.3.1. Users should upgrade to >= 21.3.1.

Workarounds

Validate or limit the size of input buffers before passing them to file-type, or run file type detection in a worker thread with a timeout.

References

Reporter

crnkovic@lokvica.com

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

CVE ID

CVE-2026-31808

Weaknesses

No CWEs