Description
HAPI FHIR is a complete implementation of the HL7 FHIR standard for healthcare interoperability in Java. Prior to 6.9.9 and 6.9.4.2, all implementations of FHIRPathEngine accept arbitrary FHIRPath expressions and evaluate them without input validation, and the FHIRPath functions matches(), matchesFull(), and replaceMatches() pass user-controlled regular expressions to Java's Pattern.compile() and String.replaceAll() through an incomplete timeout utility. An attacker can send a resource containing an evil regex pattern that causes catastrophic backtracking, exhausting CPU resources and causing denial of service in the FHIR Validator HTTP endpoint and affected org.hl7.fhir.* modules. This issue is fixed in versions 6.9.9 and 6.9.4.2.
Published: 2026-07-17
Score: 7.5 High
EPSS: n/a
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
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Remediation

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Tracking

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Advisories
Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-7cmj-v6x8-frvv org.hl7.fhir.core: ReDoS via FHIRPath matches()/replaceMatches() in FHIR Validator HTTP Endpoint
History

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 21:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description HAPI FHIR is a complete implementation of the HL7 FHIR standard for healthcare interoperability in Java. Prior to 6.9.9 and 6.9.4.2, all implementations of FHIRPathEngine accept arbitrary FHIRPath expressions and evaluate them without input validation, and the FHIRPath functions matches(), matchesFull(), and replaceMatches() pass user-controlled regular expressions to Java's Pattern.compile() and String.replaceAll() through an incomplete timeout utility. An attacker can send a resource containing an evil regex pattern that causes catastrophic backtracking, exhausting CPU resources and causing denial of service in the FHIR Validator HTTP endpoint and affected org.hl7.fhir.* modules. This issue is fixed in versions 6.9.9 and 6.9.4.2.
Title HAPI FHIR: ReDoS via FHIRPath matches()/replaceMatches() in FHIR Validator HTTP Endpoint
Weaknesses CWE-1333
CWE-400
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 7.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}

Subscriptions

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-07-17T20:59:47.800Z

Reserved: 2026-05-30T04:17:43.095Z

Link: CVE-2026-49485

cve-icon Vulnrichment

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cve-icon NVD

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cve-icon Redhat

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cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

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Weaknesses