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GHSA-mfg7-5gfp-c4w3

Netty: Memory Leak in DNS Record Decoder via Malformed Domain Names

Quick fix

GHSA-mfg7-5gfp-c4w3 — io.netty:netty-codec-dns: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.

# pom.xml: bump <version>4.2.16.Final</version> for io.netty:netty-codec-dns

Details

### Summary A memory leak can be caused in Netty's DNS codec by sending malicious DNS packets containing invalid domain names. Because the leak occurs incrementally per packet, sustained malicious requests will cause a gradual Denial of Service.

### Details Inside `io.netty.handler.codec.dns.AbstractDnsRecord`, the parsed domain name string is passed to `IDN.toASCII(name)`. If the domain name contains characters that violate IDNA rules, `IDN.toASCII` throws an `IllegalArgumentException`.

Because this exception occurs inside the constructor before the `DnsRecord` instance can assign the buffer to its content field for later release, the ByteBuf whose reference count was incremented (or newly allocated) is never released, resulting in a direct memory leak.

There are several places where variants of this leak happen: - `io.netty.handler.codec.dns.DefaultDnsRecordDecoder#decodeRecord(java.lang.String, io.netty.handler.codec.dns.DnsRecordType, int, long, io.netty.buffer.ByteBuf, int, int)` invokes `in.retainedDuplicate()` or creates a new buffer `out` when constructing `DefaultDnsRawRecord` - `io.netty.handler.codec.dns.DnsCodecUtil#decompressDomainName` allocates a new `ByteBuf` and passes it to `encodeDomainName()`. If the decompressed domain name contains a null byte (`\0`), `encodeDomainName()` throws an `IllegalArgumentException`, leaking the newly allocated buffer.

### Impact Resource Exhaustion. Any application utilizing Netty's DnsRecordDecoder (such as DnsNameResolver or custom DNS servers) is vulnerable.

Are you affected?

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Affected packages

Maven / io.netty:netty-codec-dns
Introduced in: 4.2.0.Final Fixed in: 4.2.16.Final
Fix # pom.xml: bump <version>4.2.16.Final</version> for io.netty:netty-codec-dns
Maven / io.netty:netty-codec-dns
Introduced in: 0 Fixed in: 4.1.136.Final
Fix # pom.xml: bump <version>4.1.136.Final</version> for io.netty:netty-codec-dns

References