CVE-2026-55851CWE-400

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

High · published July 21, 2026

CVSS v4.0
8.7
EPSS
1%
Percentile
49.5
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v4.0
8.7 · HIGH
Vector
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
EPSS
0.00630 · 49.5th percentile
Weakness
CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Published
2026-07-21T21:22Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 21 JUL 21:22Z
    Netty codec-haproxy: Signed-Byte Sentinel Collision in HAProxyMessageDecoder Leads to Unbounded Memory Exhaustion
    cvelistv5