Home/CVE/file-type detects the file type of a file, stream, or data. Prior to 21.3.1, a denial of service vulnerability exists in
CVE

CVE-2026-31808

file-type detects the file type of a file, stream, or data. Prior to 21.3.1, a denial of service vulnerability exists in

file-type detects the file type of a file, stream, or data. Prior to 21.3.1, 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.

Fixed in version 21.3.1.

MEDIUM · CVSS 5.3 EPSS 0.00031
Schedule remediation
  • SSVC automatable: yes - attacks can be scripted at scale
Sigma rules0 YARA rules0

Affected Products & Versions

1
sindresorhus file-type>= 13.0.0 and < 21.3.1

Affected Packages

1
Language-ecosystem packages (from OSV) tied to this CVE, with the version that fixes it - the dependency-level detail NVD doesn’t carry.
npm file-type MODERATE fixed in 21.3.1

Scoring & Timeline

5.3
MEDIUM · CVSS v3.1 · security-advisories@github.com
View on NVD
Attack Vector
Network Adjacent Local Physical
Attack Complexity
Low High
Privileges Required
None Low High
User Interaction
None Required
Scope
Unchanged Changed
Confidentiality
None Low High
Integrity
None Low High
Availability
None Low High
Published to NVD10 Mar 2026 · 09:16 PM
CVSS VectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
SSVC triage · cisa-vulnrichment
Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
SSVC asks the questions that actually drive patch urgency: is it being exploited, can attacks be automated, and how total is the impact.
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References & Sources

2
Source URLs (vendor pages, mailing lists, write-ups). Exploit/PoC links are in their own section above to avoid duplication.
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