7.5
HIGH CVSS 3.1
CVE-2026-68498
jackson-core: Delayed maxNameLength enforcement for char-backed input (ReaderBasedJsonParser) allows memory-exhaustion denial of service
Description

StreamReadConstraints.maxNameLength (default 50,000 characters) is intended to bound how much memory a single JSON Object property name can consume while being parsed, independently of the much larger maxStringLength (default 100,000,000 characters) that bounds ordinary string values. For parsers built over character input — Reader, String or char[] sources, all served by ReaderBasedJsonParser — that bound is not applied while the name is being accumulated. The code path instead re-uses the string-value length check, which is roughly 2000x larger by default. In the character-input slow path, ReaderBasedJsonParser._parseName2() accumulates the name into the TextBuffer and, when a segment fills, calls TextBuffer.finishCurrentSegment(), which validates only maxStringLength. The correct check, StreamReadConstraints.validateNameLength(int), is reached afterwards in CharsToNameCanonicalizer.findSymbol(), once the entire name has been scanned to its closing quote. By that point the full name — up to maxStringLength characters — has already been buffered in memory. A remote attacker who can have a single sufficiently long JSON Object property name parsed through this path can force allocation on the order of 100,000,000 characters (approximately 200 MB, with segment bookkeeping pushing real peak usage higher) before any StreamConstraintsException is thrown, instead of the approximately 50,000-character (about 100 KB) bound the API promises. Repeating this across concurrent requests can exhaust the heap and crash the process. No authentication or user interaction is required. Because StreamReadConstraints.maxDocumentLength is disabled by default (-1), nothing else bounds the token first, so the issue is exploitable under default configuration. Byte-input parsers are not affected: UTF8StreamJsonParser, UTF8DataInputJsonParser and the non-blocking (async) parsers re-validate maxNameLength on every growth of the name-decode buffer via ParserBase._growNameDecodeBuffer(), rejecting an oversized name after allocating only tens of kilobytes. Applications are exposed when untrusted JSON is parsed from a String, Reader or char[] — for example an HTTP request body already read into a String — rather than from raw UTF-8 bytes. This issue affects com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core from 2.16.0 and tools.jackson.core:jackson-core from 3.0.0. Releases before 2.16.0 are not affected, because StreamReadConstraints.maxNameLength was first introduced in jackson-core 2.16.0.

INFO

Published Date :

Oct. 16, 2026, 10:17 p.m.

Last Modified :

Oct. 16, 2026, 10:17 p.m.

Remotely Exploit :

Yes !

Source :

36c7be3b-2937-45df-85ea-ca7133ea542c
Affected Products

The following products are affected by CVE-2026-68498 vulnerability. Even if cvefeed.io is aware of the exact versions of the products that are affected, the information is not represented in the table below.

ID Vendor Product Action
1 Fasterxml jackson-core
CVSS Scores
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System is a standardized framework for assessing the severity of vulnerabilities in software and systems. We collect and displays CVSS scores from various sources for each CVE.
Score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Score Impact Score Source
CVSS 3.1 HIGH 36c7be3b-2937-45df-85ea-ca7133ea542c
CVSS 3.1 HIGH MITRE-CVE
Solution
Limit JSON property name length to prevent excessive memory allocation and denial of service.
  • Configure StreamReadConstraints.maxNameLength to a sensible value.
  • Prefer parsing JSON from byte streams when possible.
  • Update jackson-core to a version not affected by this issue.
CWE - Common Weakness Enumeration

While CVE identifies specific instances of vulnerabilities, CWE categorizes the common flaws or weaknesses that can lead to vulnerabilities. CVE-2026-68498 is associated with the following CWEs:

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC) stores attack patterns, which are descriptions of the common attributes and approaches employed by adversaries to exploit the CVE-2026-68498 weaknesses.

We scan GitHub repositories to detect new proof-of-concept exploits. Following list is a collection of public exploits and proof-of-concepts, which have been published on GitHub (sorted by the most recently updated).

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The following list is the news that have been mention CVE-2026-68498 vulnerability anywhere in the article.

EPSS is a daily estimate of the probability of exploitation activity being observed over the next 30 days. Following chart shows the EPSS score history of the vulnerability.