Apache bRPC up to 1.14.x JSON Parser recursion

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability described as problematic has been identified in Apache bRPC up to 1.14.x. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the component JSON Parser. The manipulation results in recursion. This vulnerability was named CVE-2025-59789. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit. Upgrading the affected component is recommended.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic has been found in Apache bRPC up to 1.14.x. Affected is an unknown code block of the component JSON Parser. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a recursion vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-674. The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack. This is going to have an impact on availability. CVE summarizes:

Uncontrolled recursion in the json2pb component in Apache bRPC (version < 1.15.0) on all platforms allows remote attackers to make the server crash via sending deep recursive json data. Root Cause: The bRPC json2pb component uses rapidjson to parse json data from the network. The rapidjson parser uses a recursive parsing method by default. If the input json has a large depth of recursive structure, the parser function may run into stack overflow. Affected Scenarios: Use bRPC server with protobuf message to serve http+json requests from untrusted network. Or directly use JsonToProtoMessage to convert json from untrusted input. How to Fix: (Choose one of the following options)  1. Upgrade bRPC to version 1.15.0, which fixes this issue. 2. Apply this patch: https://github.com/apache/brpc/pull/3099 Note: No matter which option you choose, you should know that the fix introduces a recursion depth limit with default value 100. It affects these functions:  ProtoMessageToJson, ProtoMessageToProtoJson, JsonToProtoMessage, and ProtoJsonToProtoMessage. If your requests contain json or protobuf messages that have a depth exceeding the limit, the request will be failed after applying the fix. You can modify the gflag json2pb_max_recursion_depth to change the limit.

The advisory is shared for download at lists.apache.org. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2025-59789. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1499.

Upgrading to version 1.15.0 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying a patch is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Apache

Name

• bRPC

Version

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 1.2
• 1.3
• 1.4
• 1.5
• 1.6
• 1.7
• 1.8
• 1.9
• 1.10
• 1.11
• 1.12
• 1.13
• 1.14

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.apache.org/
• Product: https://github.com/apache/brpc/

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