CVE-2026-84375

js-yaml: maxTotalMergeKeys does not limit CPU use for empty merge sources

HIGH 7.5

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.54 % · percentile 45 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
GitHub_M
NVD status
Deferred

Description

js-yaml is a JavaScript YAML parser and dumper. From 3.0.0 until 3.15.2, 4.3.2, and 5.4.1, maxTotalMergeKeys in lib/js-yaml/loader.js and lib/loader.js does not count empty mapping sources while processing the merge key <<. An attacker can alias a large sequence of empty mappings into many merge targets, causing O(N * K) processing while totalMergeKeys remains unchanged and the configured resource limit is never reached. A relatively small YAML document can therefore cause prolonged CPU consumption in applications that parse untrusted YAML, and merge processing is enabled by default on these release lines. In v3 & v4, merge is enabled by default so the severity score is higher. This issue is fixed in versions 3.15.2, 4.3.2, and 5.4.1.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-400 — Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (DoS)
  • CWE-407 — Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HGitHub_M
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HNVD · security-advisories@github.com (Secondary)

Advisories

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected products

ProductVersions
nodeca · js-yamlaffected >= 3.0.0, < 3.15.2 ; affected >= 4.0.0, < 4.3.2 ; affected >= 5.0.0, < 5.4.1

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD