Denial of Service via Exponential Backtracking in ANTLR Search Query Parser in Gerrit Code Review

Summary

CVECVE-2026-87721
StatePUBLISHED
AssignerGoogle
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-09-24 22:17:02 UTC
Updated2026-09-25 17:17:17 UTC
DescriptionUncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400 / CWE-407) in the ANTLR 3 search query parser (QueryParser / Query.g) in Gerrit Code Review versions 2.0.19 through 3.12.9, 3.13.0 through 3.13.8, and 3.14.0 through 3.14.2 allows an unauthenticated remote attacker (or an authenticated user if anonymous read access is disabled) to cause a persistent denial of service (CPU exhaustion and HTTP worker thread pool starvation requiring a server restart) via crafted search queries containing deeply nested parentheses sent to query evaluation endpoints (/changes/?q=, /accounts/?q=, /groups/?query=, /projects/?query=, /Documentation/?q=, /changes/{id}/query?expression=, or SSH gerrit query). Because syntactic predicates in conditionOr and conditionAnd recurse via conditionBase without memoization prior to capability or visibility checks and worker threads do not abort when the client disconnects, a small number of requests (such as 25 requests matching default httpd.maxThreads) can permanently pin all HTTP worker threads. This issue is fixed in Gerrit Code Review versions 3.12.10, 3.13.9, and 3.14.3.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v4.0 8.7 HIGH from [email protected]

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/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

EPSS: 0.003220000 probability, percentile 0.225490000 (date 2026-09-25)

Problem Types: CWE-400 | CWE-407 | CWE-834 | CWE-400 CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption | CWE-407 CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity | CWE-834 CWE-834 Excessive Iteration


VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
4.0[email protected]Secondary8.7HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/C...
4.0CNACVSS8.7HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

CVSS v4.0 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Attack Requirements
None
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Sub Conf.
None
Sub Integrity
None
Sub Availability
None

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/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Gerrit Gerrit affected 2.0.19 3.12.10 semver Not specified
CNA Gerrit Gerrit affected 3.13.0 3.13.9 semver Not specified
CNA Gerrit Gerrit affected 3.14.0 3.14.3 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
issues.gerritcodereview.com/issues/541287630 [email protected] issues.gerritcodereview.com
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

CNA: Amin Alemi (en)

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