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

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 <? + a target + a long run of whitespace and no closing ?> 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:

^<\?(NameChars)(?:[\x20\x09\x0D\x0A]+([Char]*?))?\?>
                     ^^^ 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

const { DOMParser } = require('@xmldom/xmldom');
const n = 32 * 1024;
const payload = '<a><?p' + ' '.repeat(n); // unterminated PI, no `?>`
console.time('parse');
new DOMParser().parseFromString(payload, 'text/xml');
console.timeEnd('parse');

Measured (Node 18), trailing whitespace after <?p, no ?> — 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(/^<\?/, '(', Name, ')', regg(S, '(', Char, '*?)'), '?', /\?>/);
+ var PI = reg(/^<\?/, '(', Name, ')', regg(S, '(?!', _SChar, ')(', Char, '*?)'), '?', /\?>/);

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.