GHSA-r7wm-3cxj-wff9

Summary

The fix released in jackson-core 2.18.6 and 2.21.1 for GHSA-72hv-8253-57qq (Number Length Constraint Bypass in Async Parser, published 2026-02-28) is incomplete. The fix commit b0c428e6 (#1555) wired validateIntegerLength into a new _setIntLength helper and called it at every place where the integer portion of a number is decided (terminator byte arrived, . / e/E seen, end-of-feed inside a fully-buffered value). It did not call it on the much more attacker-relevant path: "ran out of input while still inside MINOR_NUMBER_INTEGER_DIGITS, return NOT_AVAILABLE to caller".

As a result, an attacker who streams JSON to a non-blocking parser in many small chunks, without ever sending a terminator byte, can keep the parser inside MINOR_NUMBER_INTEGER_DIGITS indefinitely. _textBuffer.expandCurrentSegment() grows on every chunk, and validateIntegerLength is never invoked. The accumulator is only gated by maxStringLength (20 MiB default) — a ~20,000x amplification of the documented maxNumberLength (1000 default).

This is the same vulnerability class, same advisory wording ("Memory Exhaustion: Unbounded allocation in TextBuffer from excessively long numbers"), same parser class — just the streaming path the original fix didn't cover. The fix to the fraction path is correct (see _finishFloatFraction at line 1834-1837 of NonBlockingUtf8JsonParserBase.java in 2.18.6, where _setFractLength(fractLen) IS called before the NOT_AVAILABLE return); the equivalent call is missing from every integer-digit path.

Affected versions

Verified on the patched releases:

• com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core 2.18.6
• com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core 2.21.1

Structurally identical code in tools.jackson.core 3.0.x / 3.1.x — same NonBlockingUtf8JsonParserBase class, same _setIntLength rollout, same NOT_AVAILABLE returns without...