GHSA-jcvh-xf52-2cwm
ffuf denial of service (OOM) via HTTP response decompression bomb
Quick fix
GHSA-jcvh-xf52-2cwm — github.com/ffuf/ffuf/v2: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.
go get github.com/ffuf/ffuf/v2@v2.2.0Details
### Summary
A malicious or attacker-controlled target server can crash ffuf with an out-of-memory condition by returning a compressed HTTP response that decompresses to a very large body (a decompression bomb). This works against default usage with no special flags.
### Details
The response body size guard in `pkg/runner/simple.go` only checks the server-supplied `Content-Length` header, which reflects the *compressed* size and is absent for chunked responses or when Go's `net/http` transport transparently decompresses the body. After that check, `io.ReadAll` reads the entire *decompressed* stream into memory with no upper bound, so a small compressed body that expands to gigabytes causes unbounded allocation and the process is terminated by the OS OOM killer.
The guard is bypassed in three independent ways:
1. **gzip (default configuration):** the transport requests gzip on its own and transparently decompresses the response, stripping `Content-Encoding` and `Content-Length`, so the size check is skipped and the already-decoded body is read unbounded. 2. **brotli/deflate (or gzip with headers preserved):** `Content-Length` reflects the small compressed size and passes the check; the body is then manually decompressed into an unbounded `io.ReadAll`. 3. **chunked transfer encoding:** no `Content-Length` header is present, so the numeric parse fails and the check is skipped entirely.
### Impact
Denial of service against the operator running ffuf. A single hostile endpoint can OOM-kill ffuf on a default invocation such as `ffuf -u http://target/FUZZ -w wordlist.txt`, discarding all in-memory scan results. Because the crash recurs on every attempt against that target, a server can effectively make itself immune to ffuf-based content discovery. There is no confidentiality or integrity impact; only the availability of the scanning process is affected. CVSS 3.1 base score 7.5 (`AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`), CWE-409 (Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data).
### Patches
Fixed in **ffuf 2.2.0** (https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/releases/tag/v2.2.0) via https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/pull/897. The response body read is now bounded with `io.LimitReader` to the existing 5 MB download cap regardless of `Content-Encoding`, chunked framing, or transport-level decompression; responses exceeding the cap are dropped rather than read into memory. Upgrade to 2.2.0 or later.
### Workarounds
There is no configuration flag that fully mitigates this in affected versions. Until upgrading, limit ffuf usage against untrusted or attacker-influenced targets. Upgrading to 2.2.0 is the fix.
### Credits
Reported by **João Tricta** (Hakai Offensive Security).
Are you affected?
Enter the version of the package you're using.
Affected packages
0No fixed version published yet for github.com/ffuf/ffuf (go modules). Pin to a known-safe version or switch to an alternative.
References
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/security/advisories/GHSA-jcvh-xf52-2cwm[WEB]
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-73232[ADVISORY]
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/pull/897[WEB]
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/commit/fb0da86c60443b0dddbc9a86e91e3a6487dff79b[WEB]
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf[PACKAGE]
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/releases/tag/v2.2.0[WEB]