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High · 8.7 CVE-2026-113431 EEF-CVE-2026-113431EUVD-2026-118102GHSA-9jxc-cwfw-gpg8

Unbounded decoded HTTP/2 header-list size in cowlib cow_http2_machine enables HPACK amplification memory exhaustion

Published Nov 6, 2026 · Updated Nov 10, 2026 · Assigned by EEF

Description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows an unauthenticated remote peer to exhaust the memory of an HTTP/2 endpoint via HPACK-indexed header fields.

cow_http2_machine:headers_decode/4 in src/cow_http2_machine.erl decodes every HEADERS block with cow_hpack:decode/3. It bounds the compressed block size and the number of fields, but not the size of the decoded header list that RFC 9113 section 6.5.2 places under SETTINGS_MAX_HEADER_LIST_SIZE. A peer stores one header value of up to the dynamic table size (4096 bytes by default) and then references it with one-byte indexed fields, so about 100 bytes on the wire decode to a header list of about 390 KB. A consumer that copies the decoded values, as Cowboy does when cowboy_http2:headers_to_map/2 joins repeated cookie fields into one binary, allocates that amount for every stream. The total across streams and connections is not bounded.

This issue affects cowlib: from 2.7.0 before 2.22.0.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
ninenines cowlib 2.7.0 – < 2.22.0 2.22.0

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.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 erlang-cowlib No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 erlang-cowlib No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS erlang-cowlib No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS erlang-cowlib No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS erlang-cowlib No fix yet —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS erlang-cowlib No fix yet —
Show 2 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS erlang-cowlib No fix yet —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS erlang-cowlib No fix yet —

Azure Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Azure Linux 3 rabbitmq-server No fix yet —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Hex cowlib >= 2.7.0, < 2.22.0 2.22.0 EEF-CVE-2026-113431

References