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OpenAdvisories
High · 7.5 CVE-2026-62295 EUVD-2026-54639

HAPI FHIR: JSON utility parser unbounded recursion causes StackOverflow denial of service

Published Aug 7, 2026 · Updated Aug 13, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

HAPI FHIR is a complete implementation of the HL7 FHIR standard for healthcare interoperability in Java. Prior to 6.9.11, the JSON utility parser in org.hl7.fhir.utilities.json.parser.JsonParser enforces no maximum nesting depth for arrays or objects. As a result, a small but deeply nested, syntactically valid FHIR JSON document can trigger unbounded readArray() or readObject() recursion, raising a StackOverflowError before structural validation runs. An attacker who can submit JSON resources for validation can thus crash the request thread, and services that do not isolate StackOverflowError safely may experience worker loss or process instability — a denial-of-service condition. This issue is fixed in version 6.9.11.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
hapifhir org.hl7.fhir.core < 6.9.11 —
hapifhir ca.uhn.hapi.fhir:org.hl7.fhir.r5 < 6.9.11 —
hapifhir ca.uhn.hapi.fhir:org.hl7.fhir.utilities < 6.9.11 —
hapifhir ca.uhn.hapi.fhir:org.hl7.fhir.validation < 6.9.11 —
hapifhir ca.uhn.hapi.fhir:org.hl7.fhir.validation.cli < 6.9.11 —

References