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

published 2026-09-24 45 d ago modified 2026-09-25 44 d ago also EUVD-2026-86477

cvss: 8.7; version 4.0, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.3%; EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 25%
public exploits: 0; none known

Uncontrolled 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.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

Gerrit Gerrit 3.12.10, 3.13.9, 3.14.3

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: Proof of concept is public
Automatable: yes
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 44 d ago (2026-09-25)

Exploit prediction

0.32% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 25% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	4.0	8.7	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
CNA	4.0	8.7	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

Affected products

Gerrit Gerrit

Classification

Weakness

CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity
CWE-834 Excessive Iteration

References

issues.gerritcodereview.com /issues/541287630

Sources

CVE List CVE-2026-87721
NVD CVE-2026-87721

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary