CVE-2026-71429: stream-json: pick/ignore/filter/replace filters are O(depth²) on nested input — small crafted JSON blocks the event loop for seconds→minutes (DoS)
The path filters pick, ignore, filter, and replace — the library’s headline “surgical extraction” feature — recompute the full path string from the nesting stack on every checkable token. Because the stack length equals the current nesting depth, and a checkable token is emitted at every level, processing a document of depth D costs O(D²), not O(D).
This is triggered by document structure (nesting depth), not byte volume, so a tiny payload achieves outsized CPU cost, and it is the ordinary “traverse until the filter matches” path — including the exact README flagship example pick({filter: 'data'}). Any service that uses these filters to extract a field from an untrusted (or larger-than-memory) JSON body — the primary documented use case — can be made to block its event loop.
References
Code Behaviors & Features
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