Oj: intern.c form_attr has an uninitialized stack read

Summary

Oj (Optimized JSON) is a JSON parser and Object marshaller packaged as a Ruby gem. In versions prior to 3.17.3, Oj.load in :object mode reads uninitialized stack memory (and, for long keys, reads out of bounds) when parsing a JSON object whose key is 254 bytes or longer. The interned bytes can surface to the caller, disclosing process stack memory. In ext/oj/intern.c, form_attr() handles the long-key path by allocating a heap buffer, `b`, populating it with the attribute name, and then freeing it — but it passed the uninitialized stack buffer buf (not b) to rb_intern3(). rb_intern3 therefore reads len + 1 bytes of uninitialized stack memory. When the key length is >= 256, it also reads out of bounds past the 256-byte buf. The resulting bytes are interned and can reach the caller via the produced Symbol or via the EncodingError message raised on invalid UTF-8, leaking process stack contents. This issue has been fixed in version 3.17.3.

Timeline

1. Jun 30, 2026, 11:08 PM UTCCVE published
2. Jul 1, 2026, 1:34 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

3. Jul 1, 2026, 2:26 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• ohler55 oj

  fixed in 3.17.3

• ojRubyGems

  fixed in 3.17.3

References 1