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GHSA-jggr-w7fw-pc2j json

fast-copy: Stack exhaustion in fast-copy when copying deeply-nested values

published 2mo ago modified last mo.

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
—
no score, EPSS covers CVEs only
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

## Summary

`fast-copy` traverses values recursively with no bound on depth. Copying a sufficiently deeply-nested value exhausts the JavaScript call stack and throws a native `RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded` from inside the library.

## Details

Both `copy` and `copyStrict` recurse once per level of nesting. The value does not need to be circular (circular references were already handled correctly via an internal cache) and it does not need to be large. A plain object nested a few thousand levels deep is only a few kilobytes of equivalent JSON.

Measured depths at which copying begins to fail (Node.js, V8; the exact ceiling varies with JIT state and the stack available to the environment):

| Call | Last depth that copies successfully | | -------------------- | ----------------------------------- | | `copy(object)` | 2811 | | `copy(array)` | 3983 | | `copyStrict(object)` | 1874 | | `copyStrict(array)` | 1874 |

`JSON.parse` is iterative and parses deeply-nested input without difficulty, so a payload that deserializes cleanly can fail in a subsequent `copy` call.

## Impact

The failure is a synchronous, catchable `RangeError` confined to the `copy` call that received the value. There are no memory safety concerns, no data exposure, and no effect on state outside that call. In a typical server the result is a failed request rather than a failed process.

Applications that call `copy` on externally-supplied data, such as request bodies, cached payloads, merged configuration, etc., do not expect a clone helper to throw may surface this as an unhandled error.

## Patches

Fixed in 4.1.0, and backported to 3.1.0 and 2.2.0 so that every major line has a patch available without requiring a breaking upgrade.

Traversal is now bounded by a `maxDepth` option, defaulting to `1000`, which sits below the native limit in standard environments. Exceeding it throws `MaxDepthExceededError`, which carries the limit that was exceeded and extends `RangeError` so existing handling continues to match.

The limit is configurable for consumers with legitimately deep data. On `3.x` and `4.x` it is set when creating a copier:

```js import { createCopier } from 'fast-copy';

export const copy = createCopier({ maxDepth: 5000 }); ```

On `2.x` it is passed per call, and the error is a property of the exported function rather than a named export:

```js import copy from 'fast-copy';

copy(value, { maxDepth: 5000 }); // detection: error instanceof copy.MaxDepthExceededError ```

In legacy environments without `Object.setPrototypeOf`, `instanceof MaxDepthExceededError` cannot be supported; check `error.name === 'MaxDepthExceededError'` or `error instanceof RangeError` instead.

Patch / fix

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Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm fast-copy
>=4.0.0, <4.1.0
>=3.0.0, <3.1.0
<2.2.0
4.1.0
3.1.0
2.2.0

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of planttheidea/fast-copy published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.