GitHub Advisoryadvisory · NuGet
GHSA-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3 ChilliCream GraphQL Platform: Utf8GraphQLParser Stack Overflow via Deeply Nested GraphQL Documents
CRITICAL
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-40324
- Ecosystem
- NuGet
- Packages
- HotChocolate.Language
- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-674
- Reviewed
- 2026-04-16
Affected packages
• NuGet HotChocolate.Language: < 12.22.7 → fixed in 12.22.7
• NuGet HotChocolate.Language: >= 13.0.0, < 13.9.16 → fixed in 13.9.16
• NuGet HotChocolate.Language: >= 14.0.0, < 14.3.1 → fixed in 14.3.1
• NuGet HotChocolate.Language: >= 15.0.0, < 15.1.14 → fixed in 15.1.14
Description
Impact
Hot Chocolate's `Utf8GraphQLParser` is a recursive descent parser with no recursion depth limit. A crafted GraphQL document with deeply nested selection sets, object values, list values, or list types can trigger a `StackOverflowException` on payloads as small as 40 KB.
Because `StackOverflowException` is uncatchable in .NET (since .NET 2.0), the entire worker process is terminated immediately. All in-flight HTTP requests, background `IHostedService` tasks, and open WebSocket subscriptions on that worker are dropped. The orchestrator (Kubernetes, IIS, etc.) must restart the process.
This occurs before any validation rules run — `MaxExecutionDepth`, complexity analyzers, persisted query allow-lists, and custom `IDocumentValidatorRule` implementations cannot intercept the crash because `Utf8GraphQLParser.Parse` is invoked before validation. The existing `MaxAllowedFields=2048` limit does not help because the crashing payloads contain very few fields.
Severity: Critical (9.1) — `CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H`
Patches
• v12 line: Fixed in `12.22.7`
• v13 line: Fixed in `13.9.16`
• v14 line: Fixed in `14.3.1`
• v15 line: Fixed in `15.1.14`
The fix adds a `MaxAllowedRecursionDepth` option to `ParserOptions` with a safe default, and enforces it across all recursive parser methods (`ParseSelectionSet`, `ParseValueLiteral`, `ParseObject`, `ParseList`, `ParseTypeReference`, etc.). When the limit is exceeded, a catchable `SyntaxException` is thrown instead of overflowing the stack.
Workarounds
There is no application-level workaround. `StackOverflowException` cannot be caught in .NET. The only mitigation is to upgrade to a patched version.
Operators can reduce (but not eliminate) risk by limiting HTTP request body size at the reverse proxy or load balancer layer, though the smallest crashing payload (40 KB) is well below most default body size limits and is highly compressible (~few hundred bytes via gzip).
References
• Fix for v15: https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/pull/9528
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-40324 Hot Chocolate is an open-source GraphQL server. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-674 Uncontrolled Recursion weakness
References
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/security/advisories/GHSA-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3 web
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-40324 advisory
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/pull/9528 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/pull/9530 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/pull/9531 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/commit/08c0caa42ca33c121bbed49d2db892e5bf6fb541 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/commit/4cbaf67d366f800fc1e484bc5c06dfcf27b45023 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/commit/b185eb276c9ee227bd44616ff113be7f01a66c69 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/commit/b9271e6a500484c002fd528dcd34d1a9b445480f web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform package
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/releases/tag/12.22.7 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/releases/tag/13.9.16 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/releases/tag/14.3.1 web
- https://github.com/ChilliCream/graphql-platform/releases/tag/15.1.14 web