CVE-2026-55851 PUBLISHED

Netty codec-haproxy: Signed-Byte Sentinel Collision in HAProxyMessageDecoder Leads to Unbounded Memory Exhaustion

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 17.06.2026 Published: 21.07.2026 Updated: 21.07.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 8.7

Product Status

Vendor netty
Product netty
Versions
  • Version >= 4.2.0.Final, < 4.2.16.Final is affected
  • Version >= 4.1.0.Final, < 4.1.136.Final is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption CWE