Description
Uncontrolled recursion in the json2pb component in Apache bRPC (version < 1.15.0) on all platforms allows remote attackers to make the server crash via sending deep recursive json data. Root Cause: The bRPC json2pb component uses rapidjson to parse json data from the network. The rapidjson parser uses a recursive parsing method by default. If the input json has a large depth of recursive structure, the parser function may run into stack overflow. Affected Scenarios: Use bRPC server with protobuf message to serve http+json requests from untrusted network. Or directly use JsonToProtoMessage to convert json from untrusted input. How to Fix: (Choose one of the following options) 1. Upgrade bRPC to version 1.15.0, which fixes this issue. 2. Apply this patch: https://github.com/apache/brpc/pull/3099 Note: No matter which option you choose, you should know that the fix introduces a recursion depth limit with default value 100. It affects these functions: ProtoMessageToJson, ProtoMessageToProtoJson, JsonToProtoMessage, and ProtoJsonToProtoMessage. If your requests contain json or protobuf messages that have a depth exceeding the limit, the request will be failed after applying the fix. You can modify the gflag json2pb_max_recursion_depth to change the limit.
Problem types
CWE-674 Uncontrolled Recursion
Product status
Any version before 1.15.0
Credits
Tyler Zars
References
www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/12/01/1
lists.apache.org/thread/ozmcsztcpxn61jxod8jo8q46jo0oc1zx
