CVE-2023-1370 | Stack exhaustion in json-smart leads to denial of service when parsing malformed JSON

Exp

[Json-smart](https://netplex.github.io/json-smart/) is a performance focused, JSON processor lib. When reaching a ‘[‘ or ‘{‘ character in the JSON input, the code parses an array or an object respectively. It was discovered that the code does not have any limit to the nesting of such arrays or objects. Since the parsing of nested arrays and objects is done recursively, nesting too many of them can cause a stack exhaustion (stack overflow) and crash the software.

Published: 2023-03-22 Last update: 2025-02-13 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2023-1370 is rated High Exploit Risk (67.7/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 1.12%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). EPSS rose +1.11% over the last day, indicating growing attacker interest. Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2023-1370

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2023-1370

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.01% 1.12% +1.11%
2 2025-11-21 0.44% 0.01% -0.43%
3 2025-11-18 — 0.44% —

Full EPSS history (6 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2023-1370

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2023-1370

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2023-1370

GHSA-493p-pfq6-5258 · Severity: high · Ecosystem: maven — json-smart Uncontrolled Recursion vulnerability

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-1370

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2023-1370 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (json-smart), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2023-1370
redhat high — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-1370
ubuntu medium CVE-2023-1370 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (json-smart), 8 status rows across 8 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, kinetic, lunar, trusty, upstream, xenial): released 5, ignored 2, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-1370

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-1370

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
json-smart_project json-smart < 2.4.9 cpe:2.3:a:json-smart_project:json-smart:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2023-1370

cvelogic Threat Intelligence