Symfony JsonPath: Crafted Queries Can Still Tie Up a Worker

Published as "Incomplete Fix for CVE-2026-45756: JsonPath Queries Can Still Hold a Process Through search(), match() and Chained Filters"

medium Symfony Symfony components · Last reviewed Nov 6, 2026

CVE: No CVE assigned
GHSA: None
Packagist: PKSA-ptx6-hh9r-87bn
Reported: Nov 4, 2026

Lets an attacker keep a PHP worker busy for minutes in apps that run JSONPath queries an attacker can influence, despite the CVE-2026-45756 fix.

Affected and fixed versions

In 2 packages: symfony/json-path and symfony/symfony. Find the row for the version you run, and update to the release next to it.

If you run	Update to	Support
8.1.0 – 8.1.10	8.1.11	Supported
7.4.0 – 7.4.22	7.4.23	Supported

Show 2 older branches, no longer supported

8.0.0 – 8.0.x	8.1.11
7.3.0 – 7.3.x	7.4.23

Upgrade

Run the line for the branch you are on. 1 other package listed above is affected too; update it the same way.

composer require symfony/json-path:^8.1.11
composer require symfony/json-path:^7.4.23

What this means

An attacker who can influence a JSONPath query your app runs can keep a PHP worker busy for minutes. Symfony's advisory gives a 2.5 KB query on a 2 MB document taking 3.5 minutes of CPU. Send enough of these and your app stops answering.

This is an incomplete fix for CVE-2026-45756, which tried to limit the regular expressions in match() and search() filters.

Who is affected

Apps on symfony/json-path 7.3 and later (also part of symfony/symfony) that run a JSONPath expression an attacker can influence through JsonCrawler::find(). The Symfony advisory says the cost came from regular expressions in match() and search(), from long chains of filter clauses, and from queries starting with $ inside a filter. Apps that only run fixed queries they wrote themselves aren't exposed.

What to do

Update to 7.4.23 or 8.1.11. If you're on 8.0, update to 8.1.11. The fix puts a budget on the regular expression work in one find() call, and throws an exception when it runs out. Filters are also parsed once per query.

Reported by Kamil Vavra.

Check your app with an agent

Paste this into a coding agent that can read your project, such as Claude Code, Codex or Amp. It checks your composer.lock against the versions above and tells you what to update, without changing anything.

Check whether the PHP project you have access to is affected by this security advisory, and tell me what to update. Do a read-only check: don't edit files, don't run composer update or composer require, and don't try to reproduce the flaw.

Advisory: Symfony JsonPath: Crafted Queries Can Still Tie Up a Worker (PKSA-QRW8-TWH8-C9T6)
Details: https://phpnews.net/security/symfony/pksa-qrw8-twh8-c9t6

Affected versions, as Composer constraints:
- symfony/json-path, symfony/symfony: >=7.3.0,<7.4.0|>=7.4.0,<7.4.23|>=8.0.0,<8.1.0|>=8.1.0,<8.1.11

Fixed releases on branches that still get security fixes:
- 8.1.0 – 8.1.10: update to 8.1.11
- 7.4.0 – 7.4.22: update to 7.4.23

1. Find every composer.lock in the project outside vendor/ (a monorepo can have one per app) and read the installed version of each package above. Packages installed as dependencies of other packages count too.
2. Compare each installed version with its constraint: "|" separates alternative ranges, and "," means both bounds apply.
3. For each affected install, read "What this means" at https://phpnews.net/security/symfony/pksa-qrw8-twh8-c9t6 and check whether the project meets the conditions it describes (a feature in use, a config value, a driver). Say which conditions you could check and which you couldn't.
4. Report a table: lock file | package | installed version | affected (yes, no or unknown) | conditions met (yes, no or unknown) | update to | evidence. For each affected package, give the command that would fix it, without running it: composer update <package> --with-dependencies when it is only installed as a dependency of another package, or composer require with the fixed version when composer.json requires it directly. If the installed version is on a branch with no fixed release listed, say it needs a move to a newer branch.

Sources

The project's advisory →

← All Symfony advisories