GitHub Advisoryadvisory · NuGet
GHSA-67c9-f6v2-qv86 Steeltoe.Discovery.Consul: malformed 'secure' metadata aborts service instance lookup (DoS)
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-81516
- Ecosystem
- NuGet
- Packages
- Steeltoe.Discovery.Consul
- 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-755
- Reviewed
- 2026-09-17
Affected packages
• NuGet Steeltoe.Discovery.Consul: >= 4.0.0, < 4.3.0 → fixed in 4.3.0
Description
Summary
Steeltoe's Consul discovery client parses the `secure` metadata field on each registered service instance using `bool.Parse`, which throws on any value other than `true` or `false`. A single service instance registered with a malformed `secure` value (for example `yes` or `1`) aborts construction of the entire instance list for that service, making the service undiscoverable. When `GetAllInstancesAsync` is used, one malformed instance in any service can abort enumeration across all services.
This is the same "one malformed field aborts the whole batch" availability class as CVE-2026-50196, but affecting the Consul discovery client.
Impact
Any principal that can register a service in the Consul catalog can trigger a service-discovery outage for all Steeltoe applications resolving that service. The outage affects all instances of the targeted service — not just the malformed one — and persists until the offending registration is removed.
Affected configuration
• Application uses `ConsulDiscoveryClient` (any deployment).
• The Consul catalog contains at least one service instance with a `secure` metadata value that is not `true` or `false`.
• Mixed-platform environments where non-.NET clients register services with non-standard metadata values are more likely to encounter this condition.
Mitigations
If an immediate upgrade is not possible:
• Audit the Consul catalog for service registrations with non-standard `secure` metadata values.
• Restrict write access to the Consul service registration API to trusted services.
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-81516 Steeltoe is an open source project that provides a collection of libraries that helps users build cloud-native applications. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-755 Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions weakness
References
- https://github.com/SteeltoeOSS/security-advisories/security/advisories/GHSA-67c9-f6v2-qv86 web
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-81516 advisory
- https://github.com/SteeltoeOSS/Steeltoe/commit/028569c4f4f0e9e393e3c22a4fa5d07987dd8673 web
- https://github.com/SteeltoeOSS/Steeltoe/releases/tag/4.3.0 web
- https://github.com/SteeltoeOSS/security-advisories package