7.5 CVE-2026-26209

Enriched by CISA
 

cbor2 provides encoding and decoding for the Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) serialization format. Versions prior to 5.9.0 are vulnerable to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack caused by uncontrolled recursion when decoding deeply nested CBOR structures. This vulnerability affects both the pure Python implementation and the C extension `_cbor2`. The C extension relies on Python's internal recursion limits `Py_EnterRecursiveCall` rather than a data-driven depth limit, meaning it still raises `RecursionError` and crashes the worker process when the limit is hit. While the library handles moderate nesting levels, it lacks a hard depth limit. An attacker can supply a crafted CBOR payload containing approximately 100,000 nested arrays `0x81`. When `cbor2.loads()` attempts to parse this, it hits the Python interpreter's maximum recursion depth or exhausts the stack, causing the process to crash with a `RecursionError`. Because the library does not enforce its own limits, it allows an external attacker to exhaust the host application's stack resource. In many web application servers (e.g., Gunicorn, Uvicorn) or task queues (Celery), an unhandled `RecursionError` terminates the worker process immediately. By sending a stream of these small (<100KB) malicious packets, an attacker can repeatedly crash worker processes, resulting in a complete Denial of Service for the application. Version 5.9.0 patches the issue.
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-26209

Categories

CWE-674 : Uncontrolled Recursion
The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack. Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.) Ensure an end condition will be reached under all logic conditions. The end condition may include testing against the depth of recursion and exiting with an error if the recursion goes too deep. The complexity of the end condition contributes to the effectiveness of this action. Increase the stack size. Deeply nested arrays trigger stack exhaustion. Self-referencing pointers create infinite loop and resultant stack exhaustion. Javascript application accidentally changes input in a way that prevents a recursive call from detecting an exit condition. An attempt to recover a corrupted XML file infinite recursion protection counter was not always incremented missing the exit condition. USB-audio driver's descriptor code parsing allows unlimited recursion leading to stack exhaustion.

References


 

AFFECTED (from MITRE)

Vendor Product Versions
agronholm cbor2
  • < 5.9.0 [affected]
© 2022 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.

CPE

cpe start end

REMEDIATION


EXPLOITS

Exploit-db.com

id description date
No known exploits

POC Github

Url
No known exploits

Other Nist (github, ...)

Url
No known exploits

CAPEC

Common Attack Pattern Enumerations and Classifications

id description severity
230 Serialized Data with Nested Payloads
High
231 Oversized Serialized Data Payloads
High