Netty: Denial of Service in XmlFrameDecoder via CPU Exhaustion
### Summary An attacker can cause Denial of Service by sending a specially crafted malicious XML payload (e.g., repeated `</` characters) to a Netty server utilizing XmlFrameDecoder, causing the server's EventLoop thread to exhaust CPU resources and become unresponsive. ### Details `io.netty.handler.codec.xml.XmlFrameDecoder` suffers from a vulnerability resulting in CPU exhaustion. When `<` followed by `/` is encountered, the decoder scans the remaining buffer for a closing `>`. Because the parser state is not saved between `decode()` invocations, an attacker can trickle-feed a payload of `</` characters. This forces the decoder to repeatedly rescan the entire accumulated buffer. A 1MB `maxFrameLength` is enough to completely hang a server's thread while it loops endlessly. ### Impact Denial of Service via CPU Exhaustion. Any application utilizing Netty's XmlFrameDecoder is impacted. An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this flaw by sending a modest amount of malformed XML data to an exposed port.
describes (1)
Related CVEs.
| ID | severity | exploitable | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-73507US | — | — | ||
Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.1.136.Final and 4.2.16.Final, io.netty.handler.codec.xml.XmlFrameDecoder.decode() failed to preserv… | ||||
references
External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.
- https://github.com/netty/nettyPACKAGE
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/5b68c61f37aa4a3045cba624cbea239655c9003bWEB
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/bb2ff68a1fb71cb4b0eb9a9e17b66c52aff680c6WEB
- https://github.com/netty/netty/pull/17063WEB
- https://github.com/netty/netty/pull/17065WEB
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.1.136.FinalWEB
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.2.16.FinalWEB
- https://github.com/netty/netty/security/advisories/GHSA-v74w-7mr3-4qg3WEB
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