GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Maven
GHSA-2qj4-mmr9-4v2f Netty: Memory Exhaustion in SctpMessageCompletionHandler
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-59902
- Ecosystem
- Maven
- Packages
- io.netty:netty-transport-sctp
- Severity
- High
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-400
- Reviewed
- 2026-08-17
Affected packages
• Maven io.netty:netty-transport-sctp: >= 4.2.0.Final, < 4.2.17.Final → fixed in 4.2.17.Final
• Maven io.netty:netty-transport-sctp: < 4.1.137.Final → fixed in 4.1.137.Final
Description
Summary
SctpMessageCompletionHandler does not limit the total size of buffered fragments, allowing an unauthenticated attacker to cause an OutOfMemoryError by sending large SCTP fragments.
Details
`io.netty.handler.codec.sctp.SctpMessageCompletionHandler` buffers fragments for incomplete SCTP messages. The fix for CVE-2026-46340 fixed unbounded memory growth by introducing limits on the number of concurrent incomplete messages (maxIncompleteSctpMessages) and the number of fragments per message (maxFragments).
While the count of fragments is now bounded, the handler still does not enforce a maximum size in bytes.
With the default limits of 128 messages and 128 fragments, and a typical max SCTP chunk size of 64KB, an attacker can consume up to ~1GB per connection. By opening a small number of concurrent connections, an attacker can easily exhaust the server's memory, causing an OutOfMemoryError.
Impact
Memory Exhaustion. Any application using Netty's SCTP transport with SctpMessageCompletionHandler is impacted.
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-59902 Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption weakness
References
- https://github.com/netty/netty/security/advisories/GHSA-2qj4-mmr9-4v2f web
- https://github.com/netty/netty/pull/17213 web
- https://github.com/netty/netty/pull/17217 web
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/1b5abc6443b63726c72cdd285af2feb7ddbb8ff7 web
- https://github.com/netty/netty package
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.1.137.Final web
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.2.17.Final web