GHSA-mx64-mj3q-7prj
# Memory Exhaustion via Unbounded Map Allocations in Avro Decoder ## Summary The Avro map decoder accepted attacker-controlled block-element counts from the wire format and grew the destination map without enforcing an upper bound. The slice decoder already had `Config.MaxSliceAllocSize` for the equivalent attack against arrays; the map decoder had no analogous limit, so a producer could declare an arbitrarily large map (in one block, or chunked across many sub-limit blocks) and exhaust process memory until the OOM killer fired. The fix introduces `Config.MaxMapAllocSize` with cumulative enforcement across block boundaries. **The new limit is opt-in**: the field defaults to zero, which preserves the previous unbounded behavior for backward compatibility. **Upgrading to `v2.33.0` alone does not mitigate the issue** — consumers of untrusted Avro data must explicitly set `MaxMapAllocSize` on their `avro.Config`. ## Description Avro maps are encoded as a sequence of blocks; each block declares a `long` element count followed by that many key/value pairs. The decoder uses these counts both to size the destination map and as the loop bound for reading entries. Pre-fix, the map decoder enforced no upper limit at any layer: - No per-block element-count check. - No cumulative across-block element-count check. - No memory-budget check before `make(map[...]..., n)` or before growing the map. The slice decoder had been hardened via `Config.MaxSliceAllocSize` and tracked cumulatively across blocks; the map decoder was a missing-by-symmetry gap. Even a partial per-block bound on maps would have been insufficient on its own — Avro permits encoding a logical map as many small blocks, so a producer could split a 10 GB map into 10,000 sub-MaxMapAllocSize blocks and still drive total allocation past any single-block threshold. The fix tracks cumulative entry count at block-header boundaries — *before* the block's entries are decoded into the map — and errors out before allocat
Properties
- ghsa_id
- GHSA-mx64-mj3q-7prj
- severity
- high
- summary
- iskorotkov/avro: Denial-of-Service Vulnerability in Decoder
- cvss_score
- 7.5
- cve_id
- GHSA-mx64-mj3q-7prj
- cvss_vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- is_ghsa_only
- true
- ghsa_published
- 2026-05-18T12:59:58Z
- source_url
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-mx64-mj3q-7prj
- ghsa_updated
- 2026-05-18T12:59:59Z
Related Entities (7)
VULNERABLE_TO (1)
AFFECTS (1)
HAS_WEAKNESS (4)
REPORTED_BY (1)
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