GitHub Advisoryadvisory · NuGet
GHSA-grr9-747v-xvcp Scriban has an Infinite Recursion during Object Rendering Leads to Stack Overflow and Process Crash (Denial of Service)
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Ecosystem
- NuGet
- Packages
- scriban, Scriban.Signed
- 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-674
- Reviewed
- 2026-03-19
Affected packages
• NuGet scriban: < 6.6.0 → fixed in 6.6.0
• NuGet Scriban.Signed: < 6.6.0 → fixed in 6.6.0
Description
When Scriban renders an object that contains a circular reference, it traverses the object's members infinitely. Because the `ObjectRecursionLimit` property defaults to unlimited, this behavior exhausts the thread's stack space, triggering an uncatchable `StackOverflowException` that immediately terminates the hosting process.
When rendering objects (e.g., `{{ obj }}`), the Scriban rendering engine recursively inspects and formats the object's properties. To prevent infinite loops caused by deeply nested or circular data structures, `TemplateContext` contains an `ObjectRecursionLimit` property.
However, this property currently defaults to `0` (unlimited). If the data context pushed into the template contains a circular reference, the renderer will recurse indefinitely. This is especially dangerous for web applications that map user-controlled payloads (like JSON) directly to rendering contexts, or for applications that pass ORM objects (like Entity Framework models, which frequently contain circular navigation properties) into the template.
Proof of Concept (PoC)
The following C# code demonstrates the vulnerability. Executing this will cause an immediate, fatal `StackOverflowException`, bypassing any standard error handling.
```csharp
using Scriban;
using Scriban.Runtime;
var template = Template.Parse("{{ a }}");
var context = new TemplateContext();
var a = new ScriptObject();
// Introduce a cycle
a["self"] = a;
context.PushGlobal(new ScriptObject { { "a", a } });
try {
// This crashes the entire process immediately
template.Render(context);
} catch (Exception ex) {
// This will never execute because StackOverflowException
Console.WriteLine("Caught exception: " + ex.Message);
}
```
Impact
This vulnerability allows a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. If a malicious user can manipulate the data structure passed to the renderer to include a cyclic reference, or if the application passes a complex object graph to an untrusted template, the entire .NET hosting process will crash.
Suggested Remediation
Update `TemplateContext.cs` to set `ObjectRecursionLimit` to a safe default, such as `20`.
```csharp
public int ObjectRecursionLimit { get; set; } = 20;
```
By implementing this default, circular references will gracefully result in a catchable `ScriptRuntimeException` rather than a fatal process crash.
Related
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-674 Uncontrolled Recursion weakness