CVE-2026-40902 PUBLISHED

PhpSpreadsheet: CPU Denial of Service via Unbounded Row Number in XLSX Row Dimensions

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 15.04.2026 Published: 12.05.2026 Updated: 12.05.2026

PhpSpreadsheet is a pure PHP library for reading and writing spreadsheet files. Prior to 1.30.4, 2.1.16, 2.4.5, 3.10.5, and 5.7.0, the XLSX reader's ColumnAndRowAttributes::readRowAttributes() method reads row numbers from XML attributes without validating them against the spreadsheet maximum row limit (AddressRange::MAX_ROW = 1,048,576). An attacker can craft a minimal XLSX file (~1.6KB) containing a <row r="999999999"/> element that inflates cachedHighestRow to 999,999,999, causing any subsequent row iteration to attempt ~1 billion loop cycles and exhaust CPU resources. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.30.4, 2.1.16, 2.4.5, 3.10.5, and 5.7.0.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS Score: 7.5

Product Status

Vendor PHPOffice
Product PhpSpreadsheet
Versions
  • Version < 1.30.4 is affected
  • Version >= 2.0.0, < 2.1.16 is affected
  • Version >= 2.2.0, < 2.4.5 is affected
  • Version >= 3.3.0, < 3.10.5 is affected
  • Version >= 4.0.0, < 5.7.0 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling CWE