Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2026-10691: wonderwhy-er DesktopCommanderMCP ReDoS in search-manager

CVE-2026-10691 · Severity: medium · CVSS 4.3 · Published 2026-06-03

Vendors: npm.

Executive brief

DesktopCommanderMCP, a tool used to provide AI assistants with file system and terminal access, is vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack. By providing a specially crafted search pattern, an attacker can cause the application to consume 100% of the CPU, making the AI assistant unresponsive. This can be triggered remotely through prompt injection or by manipulating the search parameters used by the AI agent.

Technical details

A Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability exists in the `start_search` tool of DesktopCommanderMCP within `src/search-manager.ts`. The application uses the native JavaScript `RegExp` engine to process user-supplied search patterns when scanning Excel (.xlsx) and DOCX (.docx) files. Because these patterns are compiled and executed without complexity limits or timeouts, an attacker can provide a pattern designed to trigger catastrophic backtracking (e.g., `(a+)+ Junglewise ). This blocks the Node.js event loop, leading to uncontrolled resource consumption and a complete hang of the MCP server. The vulnerability can be exploited remotely, for example, via prompt injection against an AI agent that has access to the tool. The issue is fixed in version 0.2.39 by implementing safer regex handling.

Affected products

  • wonderwhy-er DesktopCommanderMCP < 0.2.39

Timeline

  • 2026-06-03: disclosed
  • 2026-06-03: advisory
  • 2026-07-10: patched: GitHub advisory updated with patch details

References

Related threats