CVE-2022-42004
7.50.14%
CVE-2022-42004: Death by a Thousand Brackets in Jackson-databind
Amit Schendel
Senior Security ResearcherJan 2, 2026·5 min read·3 visits
PoC Available
Executive Summary (TL;DR)
If you use Jackson to deserialize JSON and have `UNWRAP_SINGLE_VALUE_ARRAYS` enabled, a payload like `[[[[...]]]]` will crash your application via stack exhaustion. Update to 2.13.4 or disable the feature.
A high-severity Denial of Service vulnerability in the ubiquitous FasterXML jackson-databind library. By exploiting the UNWRAP_SINGLE_VALUE_ARRAYS feature with deeply nested JSON arrays, attackers can trigger a StackOverflowError, crashing JVMs with trivial payloads.
Official Patches
Fix Analysis (1)
Technical Appendix
CVSS Score
7.5/ 10
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HEPSS Probability
0.14%
Top 35% most exploited
Affected Systems
Java applications using jackson-databind < 2.13.4Spring Boot applications (depend on Jackson)Microservices with UNWRAP_SINGLE_VALUE_ARRAYS enabled
Affected Versions Detail
| Product | Affected Versions | Fixed Version |
|---|---|---|
jackson-databind FasterXML | < 2.13.4 | 2.13.4 |
jackson-databind FasterXML | 2.12.0 - 2.12.7 | 2.12.7.1 |
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| CWE | CWE-674 (Uncontrolled Recursion) |
| CVSS | 7.5 (High) |
| Attack Vector | Network |
| Availability Impact | High (Stack Exhaustion) |
| Exploit Complexity | Low |
| Authentication | None |
MITRE ATT&CK Mapping
CWE-674
Uncontrolled Recursion
Uncontrolled Recursion
Known Exploits & Detection
Vulnerability Timeline
Issue Reported & Fixed in Codebase
2022-09-14
Release 2.13.4 published
2022-10-02
CVE-2022-42004 assigned
2022-10-06