CVE-2026-44248

Summary

Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, the MQTT 5 header Properties section is parsed and buffered before any message size limit is applied. Specifically, in MqttDecoder, the decodeVariableHeader() method is called before the bytesRemainingBeforeVariableHeader > maxBytesInMessage check. The decodeVariableHeader() can call other methods which will call decodeProperties(). Effectively, Netty does not apply any limits to the size of the properties being decoded. Additionally, because MqttDecoder extends ReplayingDecoder, Netty will repeatedly re-parse the enormous Properties sections and buffer the bytes in memory, until the entire thing parses to completion. This can cause high resource usage in both CPU and memory. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
nettynetty>= 4.2.0.Alpha1, < 4.2.13.Finalaffected
nettynetty< 4.1.133.Finalaffected
io.nettynetty-codec-mqtt>= 4.2.0.Alpha1, < 4.2.13.Finalaffected
io.nettynetty-codec-mqtt< 4.1.133.Finalaffected

Weaknesses

  • CWE-400: CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: none
    • Automatable: yes
    • Technical Impact: partial

netty: io.netty/netty-codec-mqtt: Netty: Denial of Service due to excessive resource consumption from crafted MQTT 5 header

Additional References

References