Public bug reported:

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 affects ubuntu/cron

A user permitted to install a crontab can substantially delay the
central cron daemon by submitting many environment assignments. The
crontab command accepts them quickly, while the daemon repeatedly
scans and reallocates its growing environment during load_user().
Loading grows approximately quadratically for many distinct long
names with common prefixes.

Isolated measurements on Ubuntu's packaged source: 1,000
assignments parsed in 0.23 s; 8,000 in 14.35 s. A 9.28 MB crontab
was accepted by crontab(1) in about 0.2 s, but the daemon's
database-loading path took about 22 s. Editing and reloading caused
a similar delay. A practical worst case and out-of-memory daemon
failure have not been established; no privilege escalation was
demonstrated.

Debian report with an issue-specific patch and regression tests:
https://bugs.debian.org/1152897

We also prepared and tested a private local Ubuntu
3.0pl1-209ubuntu1+daybreak1 source package preserving Ubuntu's PATH
behavior. The fix indexes environment names, grows the ordered
vector geometrically, and adds 16 MiB file and
environment-accounting budgets. Ubuntu focused and root-only tests
passed in a disposable container. The Debian patched source built
in a disposable trixie container and passed all 13 existing Debian
integration tests.

Ubuntu and Debian Security Teams recommended public bug reports for
these findings. Please consider a fix in Ubuntu, including
supported-release backports as appropriate.

Brett Sutton
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** Affects: cron (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2172792

Title:
  cron daemon can stall while loading environment-heavy crontabs

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