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Fencer Intel
medium 5.3

GHSA-r4xh-jqrq-34v2 json

smol-toml: Quadratic-time parse() from parseKey rescanning to end of document on each key line

published last mo. modified last mo.

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, GitHub
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
—
no score, EPSS covers CVEs only
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

### Summary

`parse()` has a quadratic-time path in `parseKey`, reachable on default options with ordinary valid input. For every key line and table-header line, `parseKey` (dist/struct.js, lines 58 and 86) finds the dotted-key separator with `ctx.s.indexOf('.', ctx.p)`, where `ctx.s` is the whole document. When a key has no `.` ahead of it, that search runs all the way to the end of the input, and the result is then clamped back to the line terminator `endPtr` - so everything scanned past the current line is wasted. `parseKey` runs once per line, so a document of N dot-free keys costs O(n^2).

The most ordinary TOML shape triggers it: a flat list of `key = value` lines, or a repeated `[[a]]` table. No dotted keys, no special options, valid input throughout.

### Proof of concept

```js import { parse } from 'smol-toml'

let doc = '' for (let i = 0; i < 256000; i++) doc += 'k' + i + ' = 1\n'

console.time('parse') parse(doc) // ~2.8 MB of valid TOML, default options console.timeEnd('parse') ```

Doubling the line count roughly quadruples the time:

| lines | size | parse() | |---|---|---| | 32k | 0.3 MB | 0.3 s | | 64k | 0.7 MB | 1.0 s | | 128k | 1.4 MB | 3.5 s | | 256k | 2.8 MB | 14 s |

### Impact Any service that runs `parse()` on attacker-supplied TOML can be stalled. The work is synchronous, so it blocks the whole event loop, and the quadratic is unbounded: a ~7 MB body pins a core for about a minute, larger bodies for several.

### Patches Version 1.9.0 uses a different implementation for parsing keys which is strictly linear.

### Workarounds Limit the maximum document size accepted when parsing arbitrary documents.

Patch / fix

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CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
GitHub 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm smol-toml
<1.9.0
1.9.0

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

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 squirrelchat/smol-toml published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.