kaml has potential denial of service while parsing input with anchors and aliases
Impact
Applications that use kaml to parse untrusted input containing anchors and aliases may consume excessive memory and crash.
Patches
Version 0.53.0 and later default to refusing to parse YAML documents containing anchors and aliases.
Workarounds
None.
References
Wikipedia has an explanation of this class of vulnerability: billion laughs attack
Acknowledgements
Thank you to @gdude2002 for reporting this issue.
Affected software
Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.
| Platform | Package | Vulnerable versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Java / Kotlin (Maven) | com.charleskorn.kaml:kaml | < 0.53.0 | 0.53.0 |
References
- CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H- Weakness (CWE)
CWE-776- Platform
- Java / Kotlin (Maven)
- Package
com.charleskorn.kaml:kaml- Disclosed
- 20.03.2023
- Updated
- 11.10.2026 11:21
Sources and licenses
OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-c24f-2j3g-rg48 - CC BY 4.0
Vulnerability history: com.charleskorn.kaml:kaml
All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.
- Total entries
- 2
- First → latest
- 09.2021 03.2023
- Without a fix
- 0
- Exploited in attacks
- 0
Severity breakdown
- High 1
- Medium 1
Disclosures per year
- 2021: 1
- 2022: 0
- 2023: 1
- 2024: 0
- 2025: 0
- 2026: 0
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