jackson-core: quadratic backtracking in NumberInput.PATTERN_FLOAT via looksLikeValidNumber() enables ReDoS
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 2.18.11, 2.21.7, 2.22.3, 3.1.7, 3.2.2
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: poc
- Automatable: yes
- Technical impact: partial
Summary
NumberInput.looksLikeValidNumber() in FasterXML jackson-core pre-validates "stringified numbers" with two regular expressions: PATTERN_FLOAT ([+-]?[0-9]*[\.]?[0-9]+([eE][+-]?[0-9]+)?), present since 2.17.0, and PATTERN_FLOAT_TRAILING_DOT, added in 2.17.2. PATTERN_FLOAT places adjacent quantifiers over the same character class -- an optional [0-9]* run, an optional dot, then a required [0-9]+ run -- so input that ultimately fails to match forces Java's backtracking engine to retry every possible split point of the digit run. Matching cost therefore grows with the square of the input length. An attacker who can supply JSON that an application deserializes into a numeric target type reaches this method through jackson-databind's default String-to-number coercion (StdDeserializer and NumberDeserializers for BigDecimal, BigInteger, Double and Float). Because StreamReadConstraints.maxStringLength defaults to 20,000,000 characters, no constraint bounds the input before it reaches the regex. Testing by the reporter confirmed O(n^2) growth across five consecutive input-size doublings, with a single 160,000-character string consuming roughly 74 seconds in one call; a small number of concurrent requests of ordinary body size can therefore exhaust a server's request-handling thread pool. The affected method does not exist before 2.17.0, so 2.16.x and earlier releases are not affected. The fix replaces both regular expressions with a hand-rolled single-pass scan.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core
From 2.17.0 · through 2.18.10; From 2.19.0 · through 2.21.6; From 2.22.0 · through 2.22.2
- tools.jackson.core:jackson-core
From 3.0.0 · through 3.1.6; From 3.2.0 · through 3.2.1
- com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-coreMaven
From 2.17.0 · fixed in 2.18.11
- com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-coreMaven
From 2.19.0 · fixed in 2.21.7
- com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-coreMaven
From 2.22.0 · fixed in 2.22.3
- tools.jackson.core:jackson-coreMaven
From 3.0.0 · fixed in 3.1.7
- tools.jackson.core:jackson-coreMaven
From 3.2.0 · fixed in 3.2.2