path-to-regexp vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service via multiple wildcards

Impact

When using multiple wildcards, combined with at least one parameter, a regular expression can be generated that is vulnerable to ReDoS. This backtracking vulnerability requires the second wildcard to be somewhere other than the end of the path.

Unsafe examples:

/*foo-*bar-:baz
/*a-:b-*c-:d
/x/*a-:b/*c/y

Safe examples:

/*foo-:bar
/*foo-:bar-*baz

Patches

Upgrade to version 8.4.0.

Workarounds

If developers are using multiple wildcard parameters, they can check the regex output with a tool such as https://makenowjust-labs.github.io/recheck/playground/ to confirm whether a path is vulnerable.