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GHSA-w239-58x2-q8p5
No affected components available
The DAG-CBOR and DAG-JSON decoders recurse on each nested map or list without a depth limit. A payload containing deeply nested collections causes the decoder to recurse once per level, growing the goroutine stack until the Go runtime terminates the process with a fatal stack overflow (distinct from a recoverable panic).
For DAG-CBOR, a payload of approximately 2 MB, consisting of repeated 0x81 (array-of-1) bytes followed by a terminator, produces around 2 million recursion frames and reliably exhausts Go's default 1 GB goroutine stack. The existing allocation budget does not prevent this: each nested collection header costs only a handful of budget units, so the stack is exhausted before the budget is. DAG-JSON has equivalent exposure via [[[...]]]-style payloads; it has no budget system and is therefore unprotected against recursion depth as well.
Schema-free decoding (using basicnode.Prototype.Any) allows arbitrary nesting depth. Schema-bound decoding bounds nesting only when the schema itself is non-recursive and contains no fields typed as Any; schemas with recursive type references or any Any-typed fields permit unconstrained nesting at those points.
The fix adds a configurable MaxDepth option to both decoders, defaulting to 1024 nested levels. The decoder returns ErrDecodeDepthExceeded when a payload nests beyond the limit. Well-formed IPLD data rarely approaches this depth in practice; the default is generous for legitimate use while preventing stack exhaustion.
The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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