High severity · published Aug 7, 2026
CVE-2026-62296
HAPI FHIR: XHTML narrative parser unbounded recursion causes StackOverflow denial of service
7.5
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
HAPI FHIR is a complete implementation of the HL7 FHIR standard for healthcare interoperability in Java. Prior to 6.9.11, XhtmlParser.java imposes no maximum element nesting depth, so a deeply nested text.div narrative triggers unbounded recursion between parseElementInner() and parseElement(), raising a StackOverflowError. An attacker who can submit FHIR resources containing such narratives can thus crash a parsing or validation worker thread, affecting validator services and any application that parses attacker-supplied FHIR JSON or XML. This issue is fixed in version 6.9.11.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 42% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OR
org.hl7.fhir.core · hapifhir
< 6.9.11 · source: vendor