CVE-2026-55851
Medium
Elevated severity or exploit probability.
CVSS breakdown
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
| Attack Vector | N | Network |
| Attack Complexity | L | Low |
| Privileges Required | N | None |
| User Interaction | N | None |
| Scope | U | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | N | None |
| Integrity | N | None |
| Availability | H | High |
Timeline
- 2026-07-21 — Published (NVD)
- 2026-07-30 — Last modified (NVD)
Description
Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. In versions 4.2.0.Final up to (but not including) 4.2.16.Final, and 4.1.0.Final up to (but not including) 4.1.135, the `HAProxyMessageDecoder` in Netty's `codec-haproxy` module performs protocol version detection by reading the 13th byte as a signed Java `byte` and widening it to `int` without masking; a PROXY protocol v2 binary prefix followed by version byte `0xFF` sign-extends to `-1`, collides with the decoder's need-more-data sentinel, and causes `ByteToMessageDecoder` to accumulate inbound bytes in an unbounded `cumulation` buffer until direct memory is exhausted. This issue is fixed in versions 4.1.136.Final and 4.2.16.Final.
Affected
References
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/5b68c61f37aa4a3045cba624cbea239655c9003b
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/bb2ff68a1fb71cb4b0eb9a9e17b66c52aff680c6
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.1.136.Final
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.2.16.Final
- https://github.com/netty/netty/security/advisories/GHSA-q6cq-mhr2-jmr5