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Medium · 4.0 CVE-2026-40395 EUVD-2026-21740GHSA-59jh-85v4-gxrf

Varnish Enterprise before 6.0.16r12 allows a "workspace overflow" denial of service (daemon panic) for shared VCL. The headerplus.write_req…

Published Apr 12, 2026 · Updated Apr 13, 2026 · Assigned by mitre

Description

Varnish Enterprise before 6.0.16r12 allows a "workspace overflow" denial of service (daemon panic) for shared VCL. The headerplus.write_req0() function from vmod_headerplus updates the underlying req0, which is normally the original read-only request from which req is derived (readable and writable from VCL). This is useful in the active VCL, after amending req, to prepare a refined req0 before switching to a different VCL with the return (vcl(<label>)) action. This is for example how the Varnish Controller operates shared VCL deployments. If the amended req contained too many header fields for req0, this would have resulted in a workspace overflow that would in turn trigger a panic and crash the Varnish Enterprise server. This could be used as a Denial of Service attack vector by malicious clients.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
varnish-software Varnish Enterprise 6.0.9r5 – < 6.0.16r12 6.0.16r12

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
Ubuntu 26.10 varnish No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS varnish No fix yet —
Ubuntu 25.10 varnish No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS varnish No fix yet —
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS varnish No fix yet —
Show 4 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS varnish No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS varnish No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS varnish No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS varnish No fix yet —

References