Affected versions
Symfony versions <5.4.52, >=6, <6.4.40, >=7, <7.4.12, >=8, <8.0.12 of the Symfony YAML component are affected by this security issue.
The issue has been fixed in Symfony 5.4.52, 6.4.40, 7.4.12, 8.0.12.
Description
Symfony\Component\Yaml\Parser::cleanup() strips the optional %YAML directive header, leading comments, and document start/end markers before parsing. The original regexes contained overlapping quantifiers, most notably '#^%YAML[: ][\d.]+.*\n#u', whose [\d.]+ and .* overlap on the dot, that exhibit catastrophic backtracking on crafted input. A single oversized %YAML directive header (or comment / document-marker line) makes the parser hang for an arbitrarily long time, denying service.
Resolution
The four regexes in Parser::cleanup() (YAML directive header, leading comments, document-start marker, document-end marker) have been rewritten with possessive quantifiers and unambiguous character classes so backtracking cannot occur.
The patch for this issue is available here for branch 5.4.
Credits
We would like to thank Pietro Tirenna (Shielder) for reporting the issue and Nicolas Grekas for fixing it.