GHSA-563q-j3cm-6jxm
Netty susceptible to HTTP/2 Reset Attack with different on-the-wire signature
At a glance
- Published
- Updated
- CVE
- CVE-2026-50560
- CVSS_V3
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- CVSS_V4
- CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Description
### Summary Netty HTTP/2 max header size handling produces attack similar to HTTP/2 Rapid Reset. ### Details There is a setting in the http2 specification called `SETTINGS_MAX_HEADER_LIST_SIZE`. According to[ the RFC](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9113.html#name-defined-settings): “This advisory setting informs a peer of the maximum field section size that the sender is prepared to accept, in units of octets.” When a client sends that setting to Netty, it appears that Netty will behave as follows: - Read the request - Proxy the request to the origin - Attempt to produce a response - Create an exception while writing the headers for the response Functionally, this should be similar to the http2 reset attack, but with a different on-the-wire signature. ## Remediation When speaking with clients, Netty should potentially treat this as “advisory” and ignore it. It would be best to ignore the SETTINGS_MAX_HEADER_LIST_SIZE setting from clients (or ignore it when sending to clients). According to the spec, a server does not need to honor this advisory setting, and it appears that other http/2 implementations ignore it when acting as a server. ### Impact This is a DDoS attack similar to the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack. ## Credit Jonathan Looney (Engineering, Netflix) ## Contact Ashley Tolbert (Security, Netflix) - artolbert@netflix.com
Affected packages
| Package | Versions |
|---|---|
| Maven · io.netty:netty-codec-http2 | introduced 4.2.0.Final, fixed 4.2.15.Final |
| Maven · io.netty:netty-codec-http2 | introduced 0, fixed 4.1.135.Final |
References
- https://github.com/netty/netty/security/advisories/GHSA-563q-j3cm-6jxm WEB
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-50560 ADVISORY
- https://github.com/netty/netty PACKAGE
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.1.135.Final WEB
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.2.15.Final WEB
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9113.html#name-defined-settings WEB
Sources
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| OSV.dev | CC-BY 4.0 — GitHub Advisory Database |