Resource exhaustion in Hapifhir Org.hl7.fhir.core

CVE-2026-49485

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.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.007 (52.0th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 52nd percentile — 52.0% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-49485: held from 0.007 to 0.007.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.007 · newest: 0.007 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-49485?
CVE-2026-49485 is a high-severity vulnerability in Hapifhir Org.hl7.fhir.core, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-07-17.
How severe is CVE-2026-49485?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.