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UltraJSON has a Memory Leak parsing large integers allows DoS

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Mar 17, 2026 in ultrajson/ultrajson • Updated Mar 18, 2026

Package

pip ujson (pip)

Affected versions

>= 5.4.0, <= 5.11.0

Patched versions

5.12.0

Description

Summary

ujson 5.4.0 to 5.11.0 inclusive contain an accumulating memory leak in JSON parsing large (outside of the range [-2^63, 2^64 - 1]) integers.

Exploitability

Any service that calls ujson.load()/ujson.loads()/ujson.decode() on untrusted inputs is affected and vulnerable to denial of service attacks.

Details

The leaked memory is a copy of the string form of the integer plus an additional NULL byte. The leak occurs irrespective of whether the integer parses successfully or is rejected due to having more than sys.get_int_max_str_digits() digits, meaning that any sized leak per malicious JSON can be achieved provided that there is no limit on the overall size of the payload.

ujson.loads(str(2 ** 64 - 1))  # No leak
ujson.loads(str(2 ** 64))  # Leaks
ujson.loads(str(10 ** sys.get_int_max_str_digits()))  # Leaks and raises ValueError

Fix

The leak is fixed in ujson 5.12.0 (4baeb950df780092bd3c89fc702a868e99a3a1d2). There are no workarounds beyond upgrading to an unaffected version.

Credits

Discovered by Cameron Criswell/Skevros using Coverage-guided fuzzing (libFuzzer + AddressSanitizer)

References

@bwoodsend bwoodsend published to ultrajson/ultrajson Mar 17, 2026
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Mar 18, 2026
Reviewed Mar 18, 2026
Last updated Mar 18, 2026

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

Weaknesses

Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2026-32874

GHSA ID

GHSA-wgvc-ghv9-3pmm

Source code

Credits

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