The asynchronous Smile parser (NonBlockingByteArrayParser) uses a raw-binary length prefix taken…

Why it is Yellow

• CVSS 7.5 high
• Remotely exploitable without logging in

References

• https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-dataformats-binary/security/advisories/GHSA-h3c2-2m49-r49w

Original description

The asynchronous Smile parser (NonBlockingByteArrayParser) uses a raw-binary length prefix taken from untrusted input to allocate a byte[] before the body is read, with no upper bound and no overflow check. On the raw-binary marker 0xFD, _decodeVInt() computes (value << 6) + (i & 0x3F) without the (value >>> 25) != 0 overflow guard present in the blocking SmileParser._readUnsignedVInt, and _startRawBinary then allocates the declared length immediately. A Smile feed of roughly ten bytes can therefore force an eager allocation of approximately 2 GB, producing an OutOfMemoryError on reactive or asynchronous Smile endpoints. A VInt crafted to overflow int yields a negative length and a NegativeArraySizeException, a RuntimeException that is not a JacksonException and so escapes the parser contract. Either outcome crashes the request or processing thread. This is the same class of issue as CVE-2020-28491 in the CBOR parser of this library, which was fixed with a LONGEST_NON_CHUNKED_BINARY guard; the asynchronous Smile parser never received the equivalent guard. No privileges or user interaction beyond the ability to submit data for parsing are required.