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jackson-dataformat-cbor: quadratic-time TagList growth on unbounded stacked tags (CPU/GC DoS, PoC)

Written by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5 from the sources below. Verify against them.

—medium
Exploited
No known exploitation
Fix
Fixed in 2.18.12, 2.21.8, 2.22.4, 3.1.8, 3.2.4
Who is exposed
Not reported

Do first: Upgrade to a fixed version: 2.18.12, 2.21.8, 2.22.4, 3.1.8, 3.2.4.

14Pcve.now Index 14 of 100 · methodology v3 · provisional
  • Exploitation?/40Exploitation: unknown (data gap). No CISA SSVC exploitation rating yet
  • Exposure?/25Exposure: unknown (data gap). No advisory context yet
  • Reach10/20Affects Maven packages
  • Severity4/10Rated medium by HeroDevs
  • No patch0/5No signal

What would change the score

  • Would score about 69 if added to CISA KEV
  • Would score about 64 if CISA's SSVC rates exploitation active
  • Would score about 36 if advisories confirm default setups are exposed

CVE-2026-106554 is not in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. No public exploit code is tracked. It is rated medium by HeroDevs and affects jackson-dataformat-cbor; fixed in 2.18.12, 2.21.8, 2.22.4 and 2 more.

Published
Last modified
Published
Not listed in CISA KEV
14/100 · provisional
Medium (HeroDevs)
Fix
Fixed in 2.18.12, 2.21.8, 2.22.4, 3.1.8, 3.2.4
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub

Summary

The CBOR data-format module of Jackson (jackson-dataformat-cbor, part of jackson-dataformats-binary) consumes excessive CPU and garbage-collection time when it parses CBOR input containing a very long run of stacked semantic tags. An attacker who can supply such input can cause a denial of service by tying up request-handling threads, because processing time grows quadratically with the number of tags and no built-in limit applies.

Read the original description

One CBOR-parsing issue in jackson-dataformats-binary's CBOR module: an unbounded run of CBOR tags drives quadratic-time TagList growth (CPU/GC-exhaustion DoS, PoC-proven). PoC executed against com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat:jackson-dataformat-cbor:2.18.2; present in current 2.x and 3.x (tools.jackson.dataformat.cbor) HEAD. Distinct from the Avro and Smile/Protobuf advisories for this repo. Quadratic CPU/GC DoS from an unbounded chain of CBOR tags (PoC-proven). File: cbor/src/main/java/.../cbor/CBORParser.java (tag handling -> TagList). CBOR permits a data item to be preceded by any number of semantic tags. The CBOR parser accumulates them in a TagList whose backing array grows by a fixed increment (+8), not by doubling, and re-scans/copies on each growth. An attacker sends a value preceded by a long run of tag bytes; the fixed-increment growth makes accumulating N tags O(N^2) in time (plus GC pressure), with no cap on the number of stacked tags. PoC (executed, JDK 17): feeding a CBOR stream consisting of a long run of tag bytes (e.g. tag 0xC0+) before a trivial value forces quadratic CPU/GC; parse time grows super-linearly with the tag count, pinning a request thread with no configurable limit. Impact. Algorithmic-complexity denial of service (CWE-407): a modest input of stacked tags consumes quadratic CPU/GC, pinning a request thread; concurrent requests exhaust the pool. Fix. Grow TagList by doubling and/or cap the number of stacked tags (StreamReadConstraints-style).

What to do

  • Upgrade to a fixed version: 2.18.12, 2.21.8, 2.22.4, 3.1.8, 3.2.4.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. First seen by cve.now

Affected versions

  • com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat:jackson-dataformat-cborMaven

    From 2.15.0 · fixed in 2.18.12; From 2.19.0 · fixed in 2.21.8; From 2.22.0 · fixed in 2.22.4

  • tools.jackson.dataformat:jackson-dataformat-cborMaven

    From 3.0.0 · fixed in 3.1.8; From 3.2.0 · fixed in 3.2.4

Evidence 1

  1. Advisory

Corrections

None so far.

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FAQ

Questions about CVE-2026-106554

Is CVE-2026-106554 being exploited?

It is not in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and CISA's SSVC assessment does not mark exploitation as active. That does not mean it has not been attacked: vendors and researchers can report attacks before CISA lists them. No public exploit code is tracked.Source: cve.now feed data

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-106554?

com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat:jackson-dataformat-cbor (Maven): from 2.15.0 before 2.18.12; from 2.19.0 before 2.21.8; from 2.22.0 before 2.22.4. tools.jackson.dataformat:jackson-dataformat-cbor (Maven): from 3.0.0 before 3.1.8; from 3.2.0 before 3.2.4.Source: cve.now feed data

How do I fix CVE-2026-106554?

Upgrade to a fixed version: 2.18.12, 2.21.8, 2.22.4, 3.1.8, 3.2.4.Source: cve.now feed data