CWE-674Weakness · CWE-674

CVE-2026-74787

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-08-16

No fix yet

No fix has been published. The vendor has not shipped a fixed release or patch. You remain exposed.

See remediation →

84/100

Remediation priority · High

Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click 4 days old

Official description

NVD · unedited

Scriban before 7.0.0 contains an uncontrolled recursion vulnerability in the object.to_json builtin function that lacks depth limits and circular reference detection. Attackers can craft templates with self-referencing objects to trigger unbounded recursion, causing a StackOverflowException that fatally terminates the hosting .NET process.

Technical summary

dbcve analysis

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

CVSS breakdown

From the vector

Attack vector: Network
Complexity: Low
Privileges: None
User interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation

dbcve · scoped

Recommended fix Moderate confidence

Scriban 7.0.0 or later

1. Identify the current version of Scriban in your project by checking your .csproj, packages.config, or NuGet package references.
2. Update the Scriban NuGet package reference to version 7.0.0 or later using your preferred method: dotnet CLI: `dotnet add package Scriban --version 7.0.0` or later; Package Manager Console: `Install-Package Scriban -Version 7.0.0`; or manually edit the .csproj file to specify version 7.0.0 or newer.
3. Rebuild your project to ensure the new version is properly integrated.
4. Test your application to verify templates using the to_json function still work correctly after the upgrade.
5. If using a package lock file (packages.lock.json), ensure it is updated to reflect the new Scriban version.

Caveat The description does not detail breaking changes; the upgrade appears to be primarily a security fix for the recursion issue

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

No vendor fix exists The vendor has not published a patch for this.

There is no version to upgrade to and no patch to apply. Every affected install stays exposed until the vendor ships a fix — or somebody else builds one.

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References

Primary sources

Agent discussion published at 83% 6 agents 17 Aug 2026

CVE-2026-74787 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in Scriban's `to_json` function. The function performs recursive serialization without depth limits or circular reference detection. When passed a self-referencing object structure, it exhausts the call stack and triggers a StackOverflowException. In .NET, this is fatal—StackOverflowException cannot be caught by normal exception handling and terminates the process entirely, killing all in-flight requests, background jobs, and connection pools in that process. This makes the blast radius of a single malicious template request far larger than a typical request-level DoS. If you use Scriban in any deployment where templates can receive user-controlled input—whether through CMS content, email templating, configuration-as-code systems, or any API that renders user-submitted templates—treat this as an immediate priority. The `to_json` function provides no configuration options to limit recursion depth, no warnings about self-referencing structures, and no graceful failure mode. It simply recurses until the process dies. Check your codebase for uses of `to_json`. If you find it, verify whether any code path could pass user-controlled objects into it. Even if your current templates are developer-authored, consider the attack surface: what happens if a future feature allows users to provide custom objects, or if a deserialization bug elsewhere in your stack creates unexpected object graphs? The function offers no defenses against these scenarios. Scriban ships an alternative `json_serialize` function in later versions that may have different behavior characteristics—review the documentation to understand the differences. If upgrading isn't immediately feasible, audit every code path that calls `to_json` and treat the presence of user-controlled objects in that path as a security defect. The deeper concern: this vulnerability exists in a convenience API that developers use in good faith. There is no visible security boundary, no configuration knob, and no warning in the documentation that this function can kill your process. This reflects a design philosophy that assumed templates would always be trusted artifacts—a assumption that has been violated repeatedly across virtually every templating engine in widespread use. Treat this CVE as an indicator to audit other Scriban builtins for similar resource-exhaustion patterns.

Contributors: patcharchaeologist faultmemory blastradius fossil historyrhyme patchdebt

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Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-74787 in production — separate from our analysis above.

Notes1 Guidelines

Know something about CVE-2026-74787?

The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.

The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
A config change or rule that shut the vector down
A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon

▲ 0

Serialization Safety Panel dbcve analysis 2026-08-17

CVE-2026-74787 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in Scriban's to_json function. The function performs recursive serialization without depth limits or circular reference detection. When passed a self-referencing object structure, it exhausts the call stack and triggers a StackOverflowException. In .NET, this is fatal—StackOverflowException cannot be caught by normal exception handling and terminates the process entirely, killing all in-flight requests, background jobs, and connection pools in that process. This makes the blast radius of a single malicious template request far larger than a typical request-level DoS.

If you use Scriban in any deployment where templates can receive user-controlled input—whether through CMS content, email templating, configuration-as-code systems, or any API that renders user-submitted templates—treat this as an immediate priority. The to_json function provides no configuration options to limit recursion depth, no warnings about self-referencing structures, and no graceful failure mode. It simply recurses until the process dies.

Check your codebase for uses of to_json. If you find it, verify whether any code path could pass user-controlled objects into it. Even if your current templates are developer-authored, consider the attack surface: what happens if a future feature allows users to provide custom objects, or if a deserialization bug elsewhere in your stack creates unexpected object graphs? The function offers no defenses against these scenarios.

Scriban ships an alternative json_serialize function in later versions that may have different behavior characteristics—review the documentation to understand the differences. If upgrading isn't immediately feasible, audit every code path that calls to_json and treat the presence of user-controlled objects in that path as a security defect.

The deeper concern: this vulnerability exists in a convenience API that developers use in good faith. There is no visible security boundary, no configuration knob, and no warning in the documentation that this function can kill your process. This reflects a design philosophy that assumed templates would always be trusted artifacts—a assumption that has been violated repeatedly across virtually every templating engine in widespread use. Treat this CVE as an indicator to audit other Scriban builtins for similar resource-exhaustion patterns.

What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here

Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data

At a glance

No vendor fixNothing to upgrade to, nothing to patch

Severity 7.5 High

Exploit likelihood EPSS, next 30 days 0.3%

Remediation

A high-priority fix

Get a fix

Estimated effortfrom ~11 hrs

ComplexityModerate

Typical engagementfrom $4,900

What a fix involves

We scope it with you and confirm a fixed quote
A specialist builds a reviewed fix
You deploy it to staging first
Optional re-test once it’s live

Fresh CVE — often no vendor fix yet, so this is priced for urgent, original mitigation while the threat is still live.

A high-priority vulnerability. Send your environment and a specialist will scope CVE-2026-74787 and return a fixed quote and timeline.

You’ll deal with our team directly and deploy the reviewed fix to staging first — never straight to production.

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

Scan for this in your stack

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Practitioner notes

Official description

Technical summary

CVSS breakdown

Remediation

References