GHSA-q6cq-mhr2-jmr5
Netty: [codec-haproxy] Signed-Byte Sentinel Collision in HAProxyMessageDecoder Leads to Unbounded Memory Exhaustion
Quick fix
GHSA-q6cq-mhr2-jmr5 — io.netty:netty-codec-haproxy: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.
# pom.xml: bump <version>4.2.16.Final</version> for io.netty:netty-codec-haproxy Details
The `HAProxyMessageDecoder` in netty's `codec-haproxy` module performs protocol version detection by reading the 13th byte of the inbound stream as a signed Java `byte` and widening it to `int` without masking. When an attacker sends a PROXY protocol v2 binary prefix (`0D 0A 0D 0A 00 0D 0A 51 55 49 54 0A`) followed by version byte `0xFF`, the sign extension produces `-1`, which collides with the decoder's "need more data" sentinel value. This collision traps the decoder in a version-detection loop where it perpetually requests more data without consuming any bytes, never instantiates the `HeaderExtractor` that enforces header size limits, and causes `ByteToMessageDecoder` to accumulate all subsequent inbound bytes into an unbounded `cumulation` buffer until the JVM exhausts its direct memory allocation.
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Affected packages
4.2.0.Final Fixed in: 4.2.16.Final # pom.xml: bump <version>4.2.16.Final</version> for io.netty:netty-codec-haproxy 4.1.0.Final Fixed in: 4.1.136.Final # pom.xml: bump <version>4.1.136.Final</version> for io.netty:netty-codec-haproxy References
- https://github.com/netty/netty/security/advisories/GHSA-q6cq-mhr2-jmr5 [WEB]
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-55851 [ADVISORY]
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/5b68c61f37aa4a3045cba624cbea239655c9003b [WEB]
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/bb2ff68a1fb71cb4b0eb9a9e17b66c52aff680c6 [WEB]
- https://github.com/netty/netty [PACKAGE]
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.1.136.Final [WEB]
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.2.16.Final [WEB]