Description
Envoy is an open source L7 proxy and communication bus designed for large modern service oriented architectures. In affected versions envoy’s procedure for resetting a HTTP/2 stream has O(N^2) complexity, leading to high CPU utilization when a large number of streams are reset. Deployments are susceptible to Denial of Service when Envoy is configured with high limit on H/2 concurrent streams. An attacker wishing to exploit this vulnerability would require a client opening and closing a large number of H/2 streams. Envoy versions 1.19.1, 1.18.4, 1.17.4, 1.16.5 contain fixes to reduce time complexity of resetting HTTP/2 streams. As a workaround users may limit the number of simultaneous HTTP/2 dreams for upstream and downstream peers to a low number, i.e. 100.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| envoyproxy | envoy | >= 1.19.0, < 1.19.1, >= 1.18.0, < 1.18.4, >= 1.17.0, < 1.17.4, >= 1.16.0, < 1.16.5 | — |
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Red Hat
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Service Mesh 2 | servicemesh +3 | 2.1.0-5.el8 | RHEA-2021:4051 |
| Red Hat Service Mesh 2 | servicemesh-grafana | 7.2.1-2.el8 | RHEA-2021:4051 |
| Red Hat Service Mesh 2 | servicemesh-operator | 2.1.0-4.el8 | RHEA-2021:4051 |
| Red Hat Service Mesh 2 | servicemesh-prometheus | 2.23.0-1.el8 | RHEA-2021:4051 |
| Red Hat Service Mesh 2 | servicemesh-proxy +1 | 2.1.0-13.el8 | RHEA-2021:4051 |
| Red Hat Service Mesh 2 | servicemesh-ratelimit | 2.1.0-1.el8 | RHEA-2021:4051 |
Oracle Linux
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oracle Linux 8 | istio +1 | 1.10.4-3.el8 | ELSA-2021-9546 |
| Oracle Linux 8 | kubeadm +2 | 1.20.11-4.el8 | ELSA-2021-9546 |
| Oracle Linux 8 | olcnectl +8 | 1.3.2-2.el8 | ELSA-2021-9546 |
| Oracle Linux 7 | istio +3 | 1.9.8-3.el8 | ELSA-2021-9526, ELSA-2021-9525 |
| Oracle Linux 7 | kubeadm +2 | 1.20.11-4.el7 | ELSA-2021-9526 |
| Oracle Linux 7 | olcne-olm-chart +1 | 1.3.2-2.el7 | ELSA-2021-9526 |
| Oracle Linux 7 | olcnectl +6 | 1.2.5-2.el8 | ELSA-2021-9526, ELSA-2021-9525 |
Advisories 4
- RHEA-2021:4051 Red Hat Enhancement Advisory: Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 2.1.0 RPMs Red Hat Security Advisories (RHSA) · Nov 22, 2025
- ELSA-2021-9525 Important: olcne security update (Oracle Linux 7) Oracle Linux Security Advisories (ELSA) · Nov 10, 2021
- ELSA-2021-9546 Important: olcne istio istio kubernetes security update (Oracle Linux 8) Oracle Linux Security Advisories (ELSA) · Nov 9, 2021
- ELSA-2021-9526 Important: olcne security update (Oracle Linux 7) Oracle Linux Security Advisories (ELSA) · Nov 9, 2021