GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Go
GHSA-jcvh-xf52-2cwm ffuf denial of service (OOM) via HTTP response decompression bomb
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-73232
- Ecosystem
- Go
- Packages
- github.com/ffuf/ffuf/v2, github.com/ffuf/ffuf
- 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-409
- Reviewed
- 2026-09-03
Affected packages
• Go github.com/ffuf/ffuf/v2: < 2.2.0 → fixed in 2.2.0
• Go github.com/ffuf/ffuf: <= 1.5.0 (no fix yet)
Description
Summary
A malicious or attacker-controlled target server can crash ffuf with an out-of-memory condition by returning a compressed HTTP response that decompresses to a very large body (a decompression
bomb). This works against default usage with no special flags.
### Details
The response body size guard in `pkg/runner/simple.go` only checks the server-supplied `Content-Length` header, which reflects the *compressed* size and is absent for chunked responses or when Go's
`net/http` transport transparently decompresses the body. After that check, `io.ReadAll` reads the entire *decompressed* stream into memory with no upper bound, so a small compressed body that
expands to gigabytes causes unbounded allocation and the process is terminated by the OS OOM killer.
The guard is bypassed in three independent ways:
1. gzip (default configuration): the transport requests gzip on its own and transparently decompresses the response, stripping `Content-Encoding` and `Content-Length`, so the size check is
skipped and the already-decoded body is read unbounded.
2. brotli/deflate (or gzip with headers preserved): `Content-Length` reflects the small compressed size and passes the check; the body is then manually decompressed into an unbounded
`io.ReadAll`.
3. chunked transfer encoding: no `Content-Length` header is present, so the numeric parse fails and the check is skipped entirely.
### Impact
Denial of service against the operator running ffuf. A single hostile endpoint can OOM-kill ffuf on a default invocation such as `ffuf -u http://target/FUZZ -w wordlist.txt`, discarding all
in-memory scan results. Because the crash recurs on every attempt against that target, a server can effectively make itself immune to ffuf-based content discovery. There is no confidentiality or
integrity impact; only the availability of the scanning process is affected. CVSS 3.1 base score 7.5 (`AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`), CWE-409 (Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data).
### Patches
Fixed in ffuf 2.2.0 (https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/releases/tag/v2.2.0) via https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/pull/897. The response body read is now bounded with `io.LimitReader` to the existing 5
MB download cap regardless of `Content-Encoding`, chunked framing, or transport-level decompression; responses exceeding the cap are dropped rather than read into memory. Upgrade to 2.2.0 or later.
### Workarounds
There is no configuration flag that fully mitigates this in affected versions. Until upgrading, limit ffuf usage against untrusted or attacker-influenced targets. Upgrading to 2.2.0 is the fix.
### Credits
Reported by João Tricta (Hakai Offensive Security).
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-73232 ffuf is a fast web fuzzer written in Go. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-409 Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) weakness
References
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/security/advisories/GHSA-jcvh-xf52-2cwm web
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-73232 advisory
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/pull/897 web
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/commit/fb0da86c60443b0dddbc9a86e91e3a6487dff79b web
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf package
- https://github.com/ffuf/ffuf/releases/tag/v2.2.0 web