# CVE-2026-68498: Denial of service in jackson-core > Remote attackers can cause memory exhaustion and crash Java applications by sending JSON with excessively long property names, bypassing intended length limits. - **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:** Yes - **Published:** 16 Oct 2026 - **Updated:** 20 Oct 2026 - **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2026-68498, GHSA-649p-m576-vr99, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-68498 ## What is CVE-2026-68498? CVE-2026-68498 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in FasterXML jackson-core, published on 16 Oct 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim. ### Official description StreamReadConstraints.maxNameLength (default 50,000 characters) is intended to bound how much memory a single JSON Object property name can consume while being parsed, independently of the much larger maxStringLength (default 100,000,000 characters) that bounds ordinary string values. For parsers built over character input — Reader, String or char[] sources, all served by ReaderBasedJsonParser — that bound is not applied while the name is being accumulated. The code path instead re-uses the string-value length check, which is roughly 2000x larger by default. In the character-input slow path, ReaderBasedJsonParser._parseName2() accumulates the name into the TextBuffer and, when a segment fills, calls TextBuffer.finishCurrentSegment(), which validates only maxStringLength. The correct check, StreamReadConstraints.validateNameLength(int), is reached afterwards in CharsToNameCanonicalizer.findSymbol(), once the entire name has been scanned to its closing quote. By that point the full name — up to maxStringLength characters — has already been buffered in memory. A remote attacker who can have a single sufficiently long JSON Object property name parsed through this path can force allocation on the order of 100,000,000 characters (approximately 200 MB, with segment bookkeeping pushing real peak usage higher) before any StreamConstraintsException is thrown, instead of the approximately 50,000-character (about 100 KB) bound the API promises. Repeating this across concurrent requests can exhaust the heap and crash the process. No authentication or user interaction is required. Because StreamReadConstraints.maxDocumentLength is disabled by default (-1), nothing else bounds the token first, so the issue is exploitable under default configuration. Byte-input parsers are not affected: UTF8StreamJsonParser, UTF8DataInputJsonParser and the non-blocking (async) parsers re-validate maxNameLength on every growth of the name-decode buffer via ParserBase._growNameDecodeBuffer(), rejecting an oversized name after allocating only tens of kilobytes. Applications are exposed when untrusted JSON is parsed from a String, Reader or char[] — for example an HTTP request body already read into a String — rather than from raw UTF-8 bytes. This issue affects com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core from 2.16.0 and tools.jackson.core:jackson-core from 3.0.0. Releases before 2.16.0 are not affected, because StreamReadConstraints.maxNameLength was first introduced in jackson-core 2.16.0. Weakness: CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption) ## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-68498? ## How do I fix CVE-2026-68498? Apply the vendor's patch. ## Is CVE-2026-68498 being exploited? There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-68498 in the wild and no public exploit code. ## Fix prompt for AI coding agents ```text Check this codebase for CVE-2026-68498 and fix it if it is affected. What it is: CVE-2026-68498 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in FasterXML jackson-core, published on 16 Oct 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-2026-68498 in the wild and no public exploit code. Affected product: FasterXML jackson-core. 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-2026-68498/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-68498/index.md) ``` ## Sources - CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-68498 - NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-68498 - OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-68498 --- From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-68498/ Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.