GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j
Fix: symfony/symfony@1ac2d47GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j is a Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in symfony/json-path. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Symfony's JsonPath Evaluates Attacker-Controlled Regular Expressions in match()/search() Without Limits — ReDoS
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
Real-World Exposure
symfony/json-path🐘symfony/json-path🐘symfony/symfony🐘symfony/symfonyReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Description
The JsonPath component's match() and search() filter functions compile a caller-supplied pattern straight into preg_match():
'match' => @preg_match(\sprintf('/^%s$/u', $this->transformJsonPathRegex($argList[1])), $value),
'search' => @preg_match("/{$this->transformJsonPathRegex($argList[1])}/u", $value),
transformJsonPathRegex() only performs cosmetic escaping: there is no length cap, no restriction to the RFC 9485 i-regexp subset, and no bound on backtracking. An application that evaluates an attacker-influenced JSONPath expression server-side (e.g. one taken from a query parameter or API field and passed to JsonCrawler) can therefore be made to run a catastrophic-backtracking pattern such as $[?search(@, "(a+)+$")]. Evaluated against a moderately sized document, this pins a CPU core for seconds per request, so a handful of concurrent requests exhausts the worker pool: a denial of service. Because the preg_match() calls are prefixed with @, the PCRE backtrack-limit errors that would otherwise surface are suppressed, leaving no log trace.
Conditions for exploitation
An application that evaluates an attacker-influenced JSONPath expression containing a match() / search() filter against any non-trivial JSON input.
Resolution
JsonCrawler runs the preg_match() calls through a helper that lowers pcre.backtrack_limit to 10000 for the duration of the call (restoring the previous value afterwards), so a pathological pattern fails fast instead of stalling the worker.
The patch for this issue is available here for branch 7.4.
Credits
Symfony would like to thank Himanshu Anand for reporting the issue and Alexandre Daubois for providing the fix.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | symfony/json-path | ≥ 7.3.0&&< 7.4.12 | 7.4.12 |
| 🐘Packagist | symfony/json-path | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.0.12 | 8.0.12 |
| 🐘Packagist | symfony/symfony | ≥ 7.3.0&&< 7.4.12 | 7.4.12 |
| 🐘Packagist | symfony/symfony | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.0.12 | 8.0.12 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for symfony/json-path. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update symfony/json-path to 7.4.12 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-8v8v-g73j-492j across Packagist dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.