Bug 2508418 (CVE-2026-67216)

Summary: CVE-2026-67216 cJSON: Denial of Service due to inefficient JSON object comparison
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: anthomas, ehelms, ggainey, jpasqual, juwatts, mdellweg, mhulan, nmoumoul, osousa, pcreech, rchan, rhel-process-autobot, smallamp, tmalecek, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in cJSON. An inefficient algorithmic complexity flaw in the `cJSON_Compare()` function allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS). By providing specially crafted, deeply nested JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) objects for comparison, an attacker can consume excessive CPU resources, leading to the application becoming unresponsive for extended periods.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-29 14:02:19 UTC 
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.