node-forge has ASN.1 Unbounded Recursion

### Summary An Uncontrolled Recursion (CWE-674) vulnerability in node-forge versions 1.3.1 and below enables remote, unauthenticated attackers to craft deep ASN.1 structures that trigger unbounded recursive parsing. This leads to a Denial-of-Service (DoS) via stack exhaustion when parsing untrusted DER inputs. ### Details An ASN.1 Denial of Service (Dos) vulnerability exists in the node-forge `asn1.fromDer` function within `forge/lib/asn1.js`. The ASN.1 DER parser implementation (`_fromDer`) recurses for every constructed ASN.1 value (SEQUENCE, SET, etc.) and lacks a guard limiting recursion depth. An attacker can craft a small DER blob containing a very large nesting depth of constructed TLVs which causes the Node.js V8 engine to exhaust its call stack and throw `RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded`, crashing or incapacitating the process handling the parse. This is a remote, low-cost Denial-of-Service against applications that parse untrusted ASN.1 objects. ### Impact This vulnerability enables an unauthenticated attacker to reliably crash a server or client using node-forge for TLS connections or certificate parsing. This vulnerability impacts the ans1.fromDer function in `node-forge` before patched version `1.3.2`. Any downstream application using this component is impacted. These components may be leveraged by downstream applications in ways that enable full compromise of availability.

Source published

26 Nov 2025 22:08:37 UTC

Source modified

10 Sep 2026 03:50:30 UTC

Observed here

24 Oct 2026 13:17:17 UTC

Source terms

GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0

Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON

This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: osv · GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS_V4 · CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Publisher rating · HIGH