CVE-2026-0994
Description
A flaw was found in protobuf. A remote attacker can exploit this denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability by supplying deeply nested google.protobuf.Any messages to the google.protobuf.json_format.ParseDict() function. This bypasses the intended recursion depth limit, leading to the exhaustion of Python’s recursion stack and causing a RecursionError, which results in a denial of service.
Statement
This vulnerability is rated Important for Red Hat products. The flaw in protobuf allows a remote attacker to trigger a denial-of-service by providing specially crafted, deeply nested google.protobuf.Any messages to the google.protobuf.json_format.ParseDict() function. This bypasses the intended recursion depth limit, leading to resource exhaustion and application crashes.
Mitigation
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.5 |
| Attack Vector | Network | Network | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | Low | Low |
| Privileges Required | None | None | None |
| User Interaction | None | None | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | Unchanged | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | None | None | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | None | None |
| Availability Impact | High | High | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
Resources including CPU, memory, and stack memory could be rapidly consumed or exhausted, eventually leading to an exit or crash.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Application Data
In some cases, an application's interpreter might kill a process or thread that appears to be consuming too much resources, such as with PHP's memory_limit setting. When the interpreter kills the process/thread, it might report an error containing detailed information such as the application's installation path.
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