# CVE-2026-47851: Unbounded recursion over attacker-controlled PDF outline tree in Spring AI PDF Document Reader

> An attacker can cause a denial of service via stack overflow by providing a maliciously crafted PDF with a deeply nested outline tree to Spring AI.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 26 Aug 2026
- **Updated:** 27 Aug 2026
- **Also known as:** GHSA-3934-8pqh-qq29

## What is CVE-2026-47851?

CVE-2026-47851 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Spring AI, published on 26 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Analyzing a PDF with a deeply nested or cyclic table of contents can cause a StackOverflowError in the ingestion thread.
Spring AI 2.0.0
Spring AI 1.1.0 - 1.1.8
Spring AI 1.0.0 - 1.0.9

Weakness: CWE-674 (Uncontrolled Recursion)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-47851?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Vmware Spring Ai.

## How do I fix CVE-2026-47851?

No fix has been published for CVE-2026-47851 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2026-47851 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-47851 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Spring AI

- [CVE-2026-22738](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-22738/): SpEL Injection via Unescaped Filter Key in SimpleVectorStore Leads to Remote Code Execution (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2026-40978](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-40978/): Spring AI has SQL Injection in CosmosDBVectorStore.doDelete() (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2026-22730](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-22730/): CVE-2026-22730: SQL Injection in Spring AI MariaDBFilterExpressionConverter (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2026-47835](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-47835/): Spring AI vector store metadata filtering to handle special characters in Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and GemFire Vector Stores (high 8.6)
- [CVE-2026-41705](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-41705/): Spring AI's MilvusVectorStore#doDelete(List) implementation is vulnerable to filter-expression injection via unsanitized document IDs (high 8.6)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-47851 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-47851 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Spring AI, published on 26 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-47851 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Spring AI. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-47851/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-47851/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-47851
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-47851
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-47851

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-47851/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.