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CVE-2026-55851highCWE-400

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

21Vexday Risk Score

No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.

ssvc Trackcvss 8.7epss 0.6%
exploitation probability
0.6%top 54% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
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.
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
Affected products
netty · netty