The Symfony Yaml components Inline and Parser, parse some YAML documents inefficiently, so that a small crafted document can take disproportionately long to process, keeping a PHP process busy for seconds or minutes, potentially causing a denial of service in Symfony versions prior to 5.4.56, 6.x prior to 6.4.50, 7.x prior to 7.4.23, and 8.x prior to 8.1.11.

The parser repeats work it has already done in several places. An embedded mapping in a flow sequence is parsed again for every scalar appended to it, and so are the collections nested in it, so the parse time grows exponentially with the nesting depth. The patterns matching mapping keys and tags scan a run of spaces once per character of the run, and each scalar of a flow collection is matched against a copy of the rest of the collection, so the parse time grows quadratically with the size of the input. Nested blocks are also copied at each nesting level, which consumes memory as well as time. A few other constructs, such as an empty sequence item followed by a blank line or an anchor named 0, trigger similar repeated work.


Any code parsing untrusted YAML is affected, with the default flags. In Symfony 7.4 and later, that includes #[MapRequestPayload] when the Yaml component is installed and the endpoint does not restrict acceptFormat. A single unauthenticated request with a YAML content type keeps a PHP worker busy until max_execution_time. JSON documents are valid YAML, so a JSON payload sent with a YAML content type is enough for the flow collection case. In Symfony 6.4, #[MapRequestPayload] accepts YAML only when the application registers a yaml request format.

Project Subscriptions

Vendors Products
Sensiolabs Subscribe
Symfony Subscribe
Advisories

No advisories yet.

Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

No workaround given by the vendor.

History

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 15:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description The Symfony Yaml components Inline and Parser, parse some YAML documents inefficiently, so that a small crafted document can take disproportionately long to process, keeping a PHP process busy for seconds or minutes, potentially causing a denial of service in Symfony versions prior to 5.4.56, 6.x prior to 6.4.50, 7.x prior to 7.4.23, and 8.x prior to 8.1.11. The parser repeats work it has already done in several places. An embedded mapping in a flow sequence is parsed again for every scalar appended to it, and so are the collections nested in it, so the parse time grows exponentially with the nesting depth. The patterns matching mapping keys and tags scan a run of spaces once per character of the run, and each scalar of a flow collection is matched against a copy of the rest of the collection, so the parse time grows quadratically with the size of the input. Nested blocks are also copied at each nesting level, which consumes memory as well as time. A few other constructs, such as an empty sequence item followed by a blank line or an anchor named 0, trigger similar repeated work. Any code parsing untrusted YAML is affected, with the default flags. In Symfony 7.4 and later, that includes #[MapRequestPayload] when the Yaml component is installed and the endpoint does not restrict acceptFormat. A single unauthenticated request with a YAML content type keeps a PHP worker busy until max_execution_time. JSON documents are valid YAML, so a JSON payload sent with a YAML content type is enough for the flow collection case. In Symfony 6.4, #[MapRequestPayload] accepts YAML only when the application registers a yaml request format.
Title Symfony: Exponential and Quadratic Parse Times in the YAML Parser Let a Single Document Hold a Process
First Time appeared Sensiolabs
Sensiolabs symfony
Weaknesses CWE-1333
CWE-407
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:sensiolabs:symfony:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Sensiolabs
Sensiolabs symfony
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 8.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}


Projects

Sign in to view the affected projects.

cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: Checkmarx

Published:

Updated: 2026-11-06T15:19:58.366Z

Reserved: 2026-11-06T14:48:55.784Z

Link: CVE-2026-123792

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-11-06T16:17:55.463

Modified: 2026-11-06T16:17:55.463

Link: CVE-2026-123792

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-11-06T16:45:05Z

Weaknesses