CVE-2026-89425jackson-core: UTF8DataInputJsonParser._reportInvalidToken() does not honor maxErrorTokenLength, allowing unbounded StringBuilder growth
Description
UTF8DataInputJsonParser._reportInvalidToken() in FasterXML jackson-core builds the offending-token text for its error message by appending Java identifier characters to a StringBuilder in a loop that has no upper bound. Unlike the three sibling parser implementations, including UTF8StreamJsonParser, it never consults ErrorReportConfiguration.getMaxErrorTokenLength() (default 256). A malformed token supplied to a parser created through JsonFactory.createParser(DataInput) is therefore accumulated in full. No StreamReadConstraints setting mitigates this: maxDocumentLength cannot be applied to DataInput sources at all, and maxStringLength does not cover this path because the accumulation bypasses ReadConstrainedTextBuffer. The reporter measured a 20,000,109-character exception message from a 20-million-character malformed token on the DataInput path, against 367 characters for identical input on the InputStream path. Scaling the payload drives the StringBuilder, which also incurs byte-to-char expansion and internal array doubling, to many times the raw payload size and can trigger OutOfMemoryError for the whole JVM. UTF8DataInputJsonParser was introduced in 2.8.0 together with createParser(DataInput); releases before 2.8.0 do not contain the affected class.
Data: CVE.org, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS, Ubuntu. Published as the sources state it, in English.
Affected products and versions
| Vendor | Product | Versions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| FasterXML | jackson-core | 2.8.0 – ≤ 2.18.10, 2.19.0 – ≤ 2.21.6, 2.22.0 – ≤ 2.22.2 |
References and patches
- GHSA-7hhh-6rmp-j9qf vendor-advisory
- FasterXML/jackson-core#1698 patch