CVE-2025-52999

jackson-core contains core low-level incremental (streaming) parser and generator abstractions used by Jackson Data Processor. In versions prior to 2.15.0, if a user parses an input file and it has deeply nested data, Jackson could end up throwing a StackoverflowError if the depth is particularly large. jackson-core 2.15.0 contains a configurable limit for how deep Jackson will traverse in an input document, defaulting to an allowable depth of 1000. jackson-core will throw a StreamConstraintsException if the limit is reached. jackson-databind also benefits from this change because it uses jackson-core to parse JSON inputs. As a workaround, users should avoid parsing input files from untrusted sources.

Weakness

A stack-based buffer overflow condition is a condition where the buffer being overwritten is allocated on the stack (i.e., is a local variable or, rarely, a parameter to a function).

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index checking.
• D3-SFCV (Stack Frame Canary Validation) from D3FEND [REF-1334] discusses canary-based detection in detail.
• Run or compile the software using features or extensions that randomly arrange the positions of a program’s executable and libraries in memory. Because this makes the addresses unpredictable, it can prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to exploitable code.
• Examples include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) [REF-58] [REF-60] and Position-Independent Executables (PIE) [REF-64]. Imported modules may be similarly realigned if their default memory addresses conflict with other modules, in a process known as “rebasing” (for Windows) and “prelinking” (for Linux) [REF-1332] using randomly generated addresses. ASLR for libraries cannot be used in conjunction with prelink since it would require relocating the libraries at run-time, defeating the whole purpose of prelinking.
• For more information on these techniques see D3-SAOR (Segment Address Offset Randomization) from D3FEND [REF-1335].

References

• https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-core/pull/943
• https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-core/security/advisories/GHSA-h46c-h94j-95f3