8.7 HIGH
- CVSS version (CVSS): 4.0
- Attack Vector (AV): Network (N)
- Attack Complexity (AC): Low (L)
- Attack Requirement (AT): None (N)
- Privileges Required (PR): None (N)
- User Interaction (UI): None (N)
- Vulnerable System Impact Confidentiality (VC): None (N)
- Vulnerable System Impact Integrity (VI): None (N)
- Vulnerable System Impact Availability (VA): High (H)
- Subsequent System Impact Confidentiality (SC): None (N)
- Subsequent System Impact Integrity (SI): None (N)
- Subsequent System Impact Availability (SA): None (N)
- Modified Attack Vector (MAV): Network (N)
- Modified Attack Complexity (MAC): Low (L)
- Modified Attack Requirement (MAT): None (N)
- Modified Privileges Required (MPR): None (N)
- Modified User Interaction (MUI): None (N)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Confidentiality (MVC): None (N)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Integrity (MVI): None (N)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Availability (MVA): High (H)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Confidentiality (MSC): Negligible (N)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Integrity (MSI): Negligible (N)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Availability (MSA): Negligible (N)
- Safety (S): Not Defined (X)
- Automatable (AU): Not Defined (X)
- Recovery (R): Not Defined (X)
- Value Density (V): Not Defined (X)
- Vulnerability Response Effort (RE): Not Defined (X)
- Provider Urgency (U): Not Defined (X)
- Confidentiality Req. (CR): Not Defined (X)
- Integrity Req. (IR): Not Defined (X)
- Availability Req. (AR): Not Defined (X)
- Exploit Maturity (E): Not Defined (X)
Activity log
- Created & dismissed (no matching packages found) suggestion
Unbounded HPACK/QPACK prefixed-integer decoding in Cowlib causes memory-exhaustion DoS
Allocation of resources without limits vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows an unauthenticated remote HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 peer to exhaust memory on the vulnerable server (or client) and cause a denial of service. The HPACK and QPACK prefixed-integer decoder cow_hpack_common:dec_big_int/3 in src/cow_hpack_common.hrl (invoked from cow_hpack:decode/2 in src/cow_hpack.erl and from cow_qpack:decode_field_section/3 in src/cow_qpack.erl) reads continuation octets until it sees one whose high bit is clear, evaluating Int + (Value bsl M) at each step with the shift M growing by seven per octet. No limit is enforced on the number of continuation octets, on the resulting bit width, or on the value; the decoder consumes whatever encoded length the peer supplies. Because Erlang integers are immutable, each intermediate Value bsl M and each accumulator update allocates a fresh bignum whose digit width grows linearly with the number of octets processed so far. Summed across the whole decode, the transient bignum digit materialization is on the order of the square of the encoded length. A single maximal HPACK indexed representation carried inside one HTTP/2 HEADERS plus one CONTINUATION frame at Cowboy's default max_frame_size_received can force hundreds of megabytes of transient allocation and garbage-collection churn before the resulting header-table index is rejected as invalid. Repeated or concurrent connections multiply the pressure and can drive the Erlang VM to memory exhaustion. Cowlib is the HTTP parser used by Cowboy, RabbitMQ's management plugin, and other Erlang and Elixir HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 servers and clients, so any exposed endpoint that accepts HPACK or QPACK from an untrusted peer is reachable. This issue affects cowlib: from 2.0.0 before 2.19.0.
References
Affected products
- <2.19.0
- <f582430498072a0c65ad338030321576dc13a343