GHSA-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) CWE-674 vulnerability in HotChocolate.Language. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
ChilliCream GraphQL Platform: Utf8GraphQLParser Stack Overflow via Deeply Nested GraphQL Documents
Real-World Exposure
HotChocolate.Language.NETHotChocolate.Language.NETHotChocolate.Language.NETHotChocolate.LanguageReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects NuGet packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
Hot Chocolate's Utf8GraphQLParser is a recursive descent parser with no recursion depth limit. A crafted GraphQL document with deeply nested selection sets, object values, list values, or list types can trigger a StackOverflowException on payloads as small as 40 KB.
Because StackOverflowException is uncatchable in .NET (since .NET 2.0), the entire worker process is terminated immediately. All in-flight HTTP requests, background IHostedService tasks, and open WebSocket subscriptions on that worker are dropped. The orchestrator (Kubernetes, IIS, etc.) must restart the process.
This occurs before any validation rules run — MaxExecutionDepth, complexity analyzers, persisted query allow-lists, and custom IDocumentValidatorRule implementations cannot intercept the crash because Utf8GraphQLParser.Parse is invoked before validation. The existing MaxAllowedFields=2048 limit does not help because the crashing payloads contain very few fields.
Severity: Critical (9.1) — CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
Patches
- v12 line: Fixed in
12.22.7 - v13 line: Fixed in
13.9.16 - v14 line: Fixed in
14.3.1 - v15 line: Fixed in
15.1.14
The fix adds a MaxAllowedRecursionDepth option to ParserOptions with a safe default, and enforces it across all recursive parser methods (ParseSelectionSet, ParseValueLiteral, ParseObject, ParseList, ParseTypeReference, etc.). When the limit is exceeded, a catchable SyntaxException is thrown instead of overflowing the stack.
Workarounds
There is no application-level workaround. StackOverflowException cannot be caught in .NET. The only mitigation is to upgrade to a patched version.
Operators can reduce (but not eliminate) risk by limiting HTTP request body size at the reverse proxy or load balancer layer, though the smallest crashing payload (40 KB) is well below most default body size limits and is highly compressible (~few hundred bytes via gzip).
References
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| .NETNuGet | HotChocolate.Language | all versions | 12.22.7 |
| .NETNuGet | HotChocolate.Language | ≥ 13.0.0&&< 13.9.16 | 13.9.16 |
| .NETNuGet | HotChocolate.Language | ≥ 14.0.0&&< 14.3.1 | 14.3.1 |
| .NETNuGet | HotChocolate.Language | ≥ 15.0.0&&< 15.1.14 | 15.1.14 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for HotChocolate.Language. 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 HotChocolate.Language to 12.22.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3 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-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3 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-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3. 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-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-qr3m-xw4c-jqw3 across NuGet dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.