CVE-2026-33947: medium-severity vulnerability in jqlang jq
jq: Unbounded Recursion in jv_setpath(), jv_getpath() and delpaths_sorted()
Published · Updated
13Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 6.2epss 0.2%
exploitation probability
0.2%top 93% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
jq is a command-line JSON processor. In versions 1.8.1 and below, functions jv_setpath(), jv_getpath(), and delpaths_sorted() in jq's src/jv_aux.c use unbounded recursion whose depth is controlled by the length of a caller-supplied path array, with no depth limit enforced. An attacker can supply a JSON document containing a flat array of ~65,000 integers (~200 KB) that, when used as a path argument by a trusted jq filter, exhausts the C call stack and crashes the process with a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV). This bypass works because the existing MAX_PARSING_DEPTH (10,000) limit only protects the JSON parser, not runtime path operations where arrays can be programmatically constructed to arbitrary lengths. The impact is denial of service (unrecoverable crash) affecting any application or service that processes untrusted JSON input through jq's setpath, getpath, or delpaths builtins. This issue has been addressed in commit fb59f1491058d58bdc3e8dd28f1773d1ac690a1f.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected products
jqlang · jqRelated CVEs — jqlang jq
In the same product, most dangerous first.
CVE-2026-39979MEDIUMjq: Out-of-Bounds Read in jv_parse_sized() Error Formatting for Non-NUL-Terminated Counted BuffersEPSS 0.8%CVE-2026-40164HIGHjq: Algorithmic complexity DoS via hardcoded MurmurHash3 seedEPSS 0.6%CVE-2025-48060HIGHAddressSanitizer: stack-buffer-overflow in jq_fuzz_execute (jv_string_vfmt)EPSS 0.5%CVE-2023-50246MEDIUMjq has heap-buffer-overflow vulnerability in the function decToString in decNumber.cEPSS 0.5%CVE-2026-32316HIGHjq: Integer overflow in jvp_string_append() allows Heap-based Buffer OverflowEPSS 0.5%CVE-2024-23337MEDIUMjq has signed integer overflow in jv.c:jvp_array_writeEPSS 0.4%