GHSA-jfg9-48mv-9qgx
Netty MQTT: Resource exhaustion in MqttDecoder
At a glance
- Published
- Updated
- CVE
- CVE-2026-44248
- CVSS_V3
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Description
### Impact The MQTT 5 header Properties section is parsed and buffered _before_ any message size limit is applied. Specifically, in `MqttDecoder`, the `decodeVariableHeader()` method is called before the `bytesRemainingBeforeVariableHeader > maxBytesInMessage` check. The `decodeVariableHeader()` can call other methods which will call `decodeProperties()`. Effectively, Netty does not apply any limits to the size of the properties being decoded. Additionally, because `MqttDecoder` extends `ReplayingDecoder`, Netty will repeatedly re-parse the enormous Properties sections and buffer the bytes in memory, until the entire thing parses to completion. This can cause high resource usage in both CPU and memory. ### Resources `ANT-2026-09608` https://docs.oasis-open.org/mqtt/mqtt/v5.0/os/mqtt-v5.0-os.html#_Toc3901027
Affected packages
| Package | Versions |
|---|---|
| Maven · io.netty:netty-codec-mqtt | introduced 4.2.0.Alpha1, fixed 4.2.13.Final |
| Maven · io.netty:netty-codec-mqtt | introduced 0, fixed 4.1.133.Final |
References
- https://github.com/netty/netty/security/advisories/GHSA-jfg9-48mv-9qgx WEB
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-44248 ADVISORY
- https://docs.oasis-open.org/mqtt/mqtt/v5.0/os/mqtt-v5.0-os.html#_Toc3901027 WEB
- https://github.com/netty/netty PACKAGE
Sources
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| OSV.dev | CC-BY 4.0 — GitHub Advisory Database |