Vulnerability details

## Summary `Immutable.Map` and `Immutable.Set` keep keys that share the same 32-bit hash in a collision bucket that is scanned linearly. The string hash is public and deterministic, so an attacker who controls the **keys** inserted into a Map can craft many keys that all collide, degrading insertion and lookup from amortized O(1) to O(n) per operation — and O(n²) to build or read the whole set. A small, attacker-shaped payload can therefore consume disproportionate CPU and, on a single-threaded runtime such as Node.js, stall the event loop and deny service. ## Details The string hash uses the JVM-style polynomial `hashed = (31 * hashed + charCode) | 0`. Strings such as `"Aa"` and `"BB"` hash to the same value (`65*31+97 == 66*31+66 == 2112`), and concatenating such blocks yields `2^n` distinct strings sharing one hash (40 characters ⇒ >1,000,000 colliding keys). All such keys route to a single `HashCollisionNode`, whose `get`/`update` walk the entire bucket testing `is()`. There is no per-process salt, so the colliding set is fully precomputable from the open-source algorithm. ## Proof of concept Inserting N colliding keys (e.g. via `Immutable.Map(obj)` / `Immutable.fromJS(obj)`) is O(N²). Measured on one machine, ~8,000 colliding keys take ~0.7 s to build and ~0.6 s to read, scaling ×4 per doubling; ~16,000 keys exceed several seconds. ## Impact CPU-bound denial of service in applications that ingest attacker-controlled object **keys** into Immutable structures, e.g. `Immutable.Map(req.body)`, `Immutable.fromJS(req.body)`, `state.merge(userObject)` / `mergeDeep(...)`. Applications that only store attacker input as **values** under fixed keys are not affected. ## Affected versions - >= 4.0.0-beta.1, < 4.3.9 - >= 5.0.0-beta.1, < 5.1.8 - < 3.8.4 ## Patches Fixed in `5.1.8` _(adjust to the actual release)_: large collision buckets are indexed by a per-process **seeded** secondary hash, restoring near-linear behavior for the affected paths. The public `hash()` is unchanged (no breaking change), and `is()` remains the sole authority on key equality. Also fixed in 4.3.9 and 3.8.4. ## Workarounds Before passing untrusted data to Immutable.js: cap request body size, limit object key count/length, and reject high-cardinality payloads; avoid building Maps directly from untrusted object keys. ## References - CWE-407 (Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity), CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption) - OWASP API4:2023 (Unrestricted Resource Consumption)