GHSA-4qpc-3hr4-r2p4
Symfony's YAML Parser Vulnerable to Exponential Memory Allocation via Recursive Collection-Alias Expansion ("Billion Laughs")
At a glance
- Published
- Updated
- CVE
- CVE-2026-45304
- CVSS_V4
- CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U
Description
### Description `Symfony\Component\Yaml\Parser` resolves YAML aliases (`*anchor`) during parsing. Aliases that reference *collections* (arrays, `stdClass`, `TaggedValue`-wrapped collections) can themselves point to other collections containing aliases, creating exponential expansion at resolution time. A small input can blow up into a multi-gigabyte structure and exhaust memory: the classic "Billion Laughs" denial-of-service against any parser exposed to untrusted YAML. ### Resolution The `Parser` now counts collection alias resolutions in a shared `ParserState` object, with a default limit of **128**, following the [SnakeYAML model](https://github.com/snakeyaml/snakeyaml/blob/master/src/main/java/org/yaml/snakeyaml/LoaderOptions.java). Scalar aliases remain unrestricted since they cannot drive exponential growth. The limit is configurable via a new `$maxAliasesForCollections` argument on `Parser::__construct()`, `Yaml::parse()` and `Yaml::parseFile()`. A new `Yaml::PARSE_EXCEPTION_ON_ALIAS` flag also rejects all aliases outright when parsing fully untrusted input. The patch for this issue is available [here](https://github.com/symfony/symfony/commit/e77391b2e4f18821198f010d573674c8ed4a970a) for branch 5.4. ### Credits Symfony would like to thank Pietro Tirenna (Shielder) for reporting the issue and Nicolas Grekas for fixing it.
Affected packages
| Package | Versions |
|---|---|
| Packagist · symfony/yaml | introduced 0, fixed 5.4.52 |
| Packagist · symfony/symfony | introduced 0, fixed 5.4.52 |
| Packagist · symfony/symfony | introduced 6.0.0, fixed 6.4.40 |
| Packagist · symfony/symfony | introduced 7.0.0, fixed 7.4.12 |
| Packagist · symfony/symfony | introduced 8.0.0, fixed 8.0.12 |
| Packagist · symfony/yaml | introduced 6.0.0, fixed 6.4.40 |
| Packagist · symfony/yaml | introduced 7.0.0, fixed 7.4.12 |
| Packagist · symfony/yaml | introduced 8.0.0, fixed 8.0.12 |
References
- https://github.com/symfony/symfony/security/advisories/GHSA-4qpc-3hr4-r2p4 WEB
- https://github.com/symfony/symfony/commit/e77391b2e4f18821198f010d573674c8ed4a970a WEB
- https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/symfony/symfony/CVE-2026-45304.yaml WEB
- https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/symfony/yaml/CVE-2026-45304.yaml WEB
- https://github.com/symfony/symfony PACKAGE
- https://symfony.com/cve-2026-45304 WEB
Sources
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| OSV.dev | CC-BY 4.0 — GitHub Advisory Database |