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Vulnerable Regex Causes Exponential Slowdown, Highlighting DoS Risk

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

A developer demonstrated the severe performance impact of catastrophic backtracking in regular expressions, specifically using the pattern `^(a+)+$`. When tested with inputs that nearly matched but failed at the end, the vulnerable regex's execution time grew exponentially from milliseconds to over 31 seconds as the input string length increased from 20 to 32 characters. A rewritten, safe version of the regex, `^a+$`, maintained consistent sub-millisecond performance across all tested lengths, highlighting the critical need to avoid nested quantifiers in regex patterns to prevent denial-of-service vulnerabilities. AI

IMPACT Highlights a critical security vulnerability in code generation and parsing, impacting software reliability and security.

RANK_REASON Developer-created example demonstrating a specific technical vulnerability and its mitigation.

Read on dev.to — Claude Code tag →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

Vulnerable Regex Causes Exponential Slowdown, Highlighting DoS Risk

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27 / 100
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Developer-created example demonstrating a specific technical vulnerability and its mitigation.
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product, other
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Standard
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Breaking (< 6h)
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COVERAGE [1]

  1. dev.to — Claude Code tag TIER_1 English(EN) · RAXXO Studios ·

    Regex Catastrophic Backtracking: The Timing Curve I Measured

    <ul> <li><p>A nested-quantifier regex went from 46ms to 31.6 seconds as input length grew from 20 to 32 characters</p></li> <li><p>The safe rewrite stayed under 0.2ms at every length I tested, no slowdown at all</p></li> <li><p>At 34 characters the vulnerable pattern didn't retur…

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