GHSA-q729-696q-g9pq is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-674 vulnerability in surrealdb. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-q729-696q-g9pq is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
SurrealDB has Denial of Service in JSON parser due to nested objects
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-q729-696q-g9pq.
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.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-q729-696q-g9pq plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 369,023 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
surrealdbReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The SurrealDB value and JSON parser did not enforce the configured recursion depth limit when parsing nested {, [, or ( tokens. The expression parser already enforced the limit for these tokens; the value/JSON parser omitted it. An unauthenticated attacker could send a deeply nested JSON payload to the WebSocket /rpc endpoint and exhaust server memory, crashing the process.
This is an incomplete fix for GHSA-6r8p-hpg7-825g, which addressed the same class of bug in the expression parser but did not cover the value/JSON parser code path.
Impact
An unauthenticated remote attacker can crash a SurrealDB server with a single WebSocket message. No credentials or query execution privileges are required.
Patches
A patch enforces the configured recursion depth limit in parse_value and parse_json, bringing them in line with the rest of the parser.
- Versions 3.1.0 and later are not affected by this issue.
Workarounds
Restrict network access to the WebSocket /rpc endpoint to trusted clients.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | surrealdb | all versions | 3.1.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for surrealdb. 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 surrealdb to 3.1.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-q729-696q-g9pq 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-q729-696q-g9pq 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-q729-696q-g9pq. 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-q729-696q-g9pq in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-q729-696q-g9pq across crates.io dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.