DaveGamble cJSON up to 1.7.19 cJSON_Compare denial of service

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic was found in DaveGamble cJSON up to 1.7.19. Affected is the function cJSON_Compare. The manipulation results in denial of service. This vulnerability is cataloged as CVE-2026-67216. The attack may be launched remotely. There is no exploit available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic has been found in DaveGamble cJSON up to 1.7.19. Affected is the function cJSON_Compare. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a denial of service vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-404. The product does not release or incorrectly releases a resource before it is made available for re-use. This is going to have an impact on availability. CVE summarizes:

cJSON through 1.7.19 contains an inefficient algorithmic complexity flaw in cJSON_Compare(). When comparing objects, the function recurses into each shared subtree twice, once in each direction, with no depth guard, making the running time exponential in nesting depth. A small, deeply nested document of a few hundred bytes (depth around 40) compared for equality consumes hours of CPU, and the cost roughly doubles with each additional level of nesting. An application that calls cJSON_Compare() on attacker-influenced JSON that is structurally equal to a reference document is exposed to a denial-of-service condition.

The advisory is available at joshua.hu. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-67216 since 07/28/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. Technical details are known, but there is no available exploit. This vulnerability is assigned to T1499 by the MITRE ATT&CK project.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• DaveGamble

Name

• cJSON

Version

• 1.7.0
• 1.7.1
• 1.7.2
• 1.7.3
• 1.7.4
• 1.7.5
• 1.7.6
• 1.7.7
• 1.7.8
• 1.7.9
• 1.7.10
• 1.7.11
• 1.7.12
• 1.7.13
• 1.7.14
• 1.7.15
• 1.7.16
• 1.7.17
• 1.7.18
• 1.7.19

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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Entryinfo

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