diff --git a/Doc/library/dbm.rst b/Doc/library/dbm.rst
index 766847b971b645..cb95c61322582f 100644
--- a/Doc/library/dbm.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/dbm.rst
@@ -272,6 +272,13 @@ This module can be used with the "classic" ndbm interface or the GNU GDBM
 compatibility interface. On Unix, the :program:`configure` script will attempt
 to locate the appropriate header file to simplify building this module.
 
+.. warning::
+
+   The ndbm library shipped as part of macOS has an undocumented limitation on the
+   size of values, which can result in corrupted database files
+   when storing values larger than this limit. Reading such corrupted files can
+   result in a hard crash (segmentation fault).
+
 .. exception:: error
 
    Raised on :mod:`dbm.ndbm`-specific errors, such as I/O errors. :exc:`KeyError` is raised
diff --git a/Doc/library/shelve.rst b/Doc/library/shelve.rst
index 88802d717d7383..95c54991887022 100644
--- a/Doc/library/shelve.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/shelve.rst
@@ -113,6 +113,9 @@ Restrictions
   differs across Unix versions and requires knowledge about the database
   implementation used.
 
+* On macOS :mod:`dbm.ndbm` can silently corrupt the database file on updates,
+  which can cause hard crashes when trying to read from the database.
+
 
 .. class:: Shelf(dict, protocol=None, writeback=False, keyencoding='utf-8')
 
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS.d/next/macOS/2023-12-21-11-53-47.gh-issue-74573.MA6Vys.rst b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/macOS/2023-12-21-11-53-47.gh-issue-74573.MA6Vys.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000000..96dcd4765d95da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/macOS/2023-12-21-11-53-47.gh-issue-74573.MA6Vys.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+Document that :mod:`dbm.ndbm` can silently corrupt DBM files on updates when
+exceeding undocumented platform limits, and can crash (segmentation fault)
+when reading such a corrupted file. (FB8919203)