Vulnerability · Published Dec 1, 2025 · Assigned by apache

CVE-2025-59789Apache bRPC: Stack Exhaustion via Unbounded Recursion in JSON Parser

High 7.5

In plain English

A high-severity security flaw in Apache bRPC from Apache Software Foundation. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 1.7% (higher than 77% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)7.5High
Exploit odds (30 days)1.7%top 23.1% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

Uncontrolled recursion in the json2pb component in Apache bRPC (version < 1.15.0) on all platforms allows remote attackers to make the server crash via sending deep recursive json data. Root Cause: The bRPC json2pb component uses rapidjson to parse json data from the network. The rapidjson parser uses a recursive parsing method by default. If the input json has a large depth of recursive structure, the parser function may run into stack overflow. Affected Scenarios: Use bRPC server with protobuf message to serve http+json requests from untrusted network. Or directly use JsonToProtoMessage to convert json from untrusted input. How to Fix: (Choose one of the following options)  1. Upgrade bRPC to version 1.15.0, which fixes this issue. 2. Apply this patch: https://github.com/apache/brpc/pull/3099 Note: No matter which option you choose, you should know that the fix introduces a recursion depth limit with default value 100. It affects these functions:  ProtoMessageToJson, ProtoMessageToProtoJson, JsonToProtoMessage, and ProtoJsonToProtoMessage. If your requests contain json or protobuf messages that have a depth exceeding the limit, the request will be failed after applying the fix. You can modify the gflag json2pb_max_recursion_depth to change the limit.

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
Apache Software Foundation Apache bRPC 0 – before 1.15.0

Weakness: CWE-674 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References