CVE-2026-67215
cJSON JSON Patch copy/add Uncontrolled Recursion Stack Exhaustion
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 8.7 High
- Published
- Jul 29, 2026
- Updated
- Jul 29, 2026
- Reserved
- Jul 28, 2026
Description
cJSON through 1.7.19 is vulnerable to uncontrolled recursion leading to stack exhaustion when an untrusted RFC 6902 JSON Patch is applied via cJSONUtils_ApplyPatches() or cJSONUtils_ApplyPatchesCaseSensitive(). A patch containing add and copy operations grafts duplicated subtrees to amplify document depth beyond the parser's nesting limit: cJSON_Delete() recurses with no depth bound, and the cJSON_Duplicate() guard CJSON_CIRCULAR_LIMIT is set to 10000, ten times the parser's 1000-level nesting limit and high enough to overflow a default thread stack. An attacker who can supply the patch document can crash the process, resulting in denial of service.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | 8.7 High | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N | VulnCheck |
| 3.1 | 7.5 High | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H | VulnCheck |
Weaknesses
- CWE-674 Uncontrolled Recursion
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
cJSONDaveGamble |
|
References
- Security vulnerabilities in the cJSON JSON parser (Joshua Rogers)exploit
- cJSON_Delete unbounded recursion (cJSON.c)technical-description
- apply_patch copy/add duplicate-and-graft (cJSON_Utils.c)technical-description
- VulnCheck Advisory: cJSON JSON Patch copy/add Uncontrolled Recursion Stack Exhaustionthird-party-advisory
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