GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Maven

GHSA-2qj4-mmr9-4v2f Netty: Memory Exhaustion in SctpMessageCompletionHandler

HIGH Published 2026-08-17 Modified 2026-08-17 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