CVE-2021-21290
MediumCVSS 6.2Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
High risk78th percentile - higher than 78% of all known CVEs
Summary
Netty is an open-source, asynchronous event-driven network application framework. In Netty before version 4.1.59.Final there is a vulnerability on Unix-like systems involving an insecure temp file. When netty's multipart decoders are used local information disclosure can occur via the local system temporary directory if temporary storing uploads on the disk is enabled.
Risk Assessment
Local users can read sensitive information written to temporary files, leading to a breach of data confidentiality.
Recommendation
Update Netty to version 4.1.59.Final or later. As a workaround, specify your own java.io.tmpdir or use DefaultHttpDataFactory.setBaseDir(...).
Other vulnerabilities in Netty
See all- CVE-2026-42583High
Netty prior to versions 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final has a vulnerability in Lz4FrameDecoder that allocates a ByteBuf of size decompressedLength, potentially leading to uncontrolled memory allocation. An attacker can exploit a 21-byte header and compressed data to force this allocation.
- CVE-2026-42577High
Netty, an asynchronous network application framework, has an issue in versions from 4.2.0.Final to 4.2.13.Final where the epoll transport fails to detect and close TCP connections that receive a RST after being half-closed. This leads to stale channels that are never cleaned up and, in some code paths, a 100% CPU busy-loop in the event loop thread.
- CVE-2016-4970High
In Netty versions 4.0.x before 4.0.37.Final and 4.1.x before 4.1.1.Final, a vulnerability in OpenSslEngine.java allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop).
- CVE-2026-75595Critical
Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.1.137.Final and 4.2.17.Final, io.netty.handler.ssl.SslClientHelloHandler#decode checks the wrong offset before reading the four-byte TLS handshake header, so a ClientHello whose handshake header spans records can cause an IndexOutOfBoundsException and invoke select(ctx, null). This selects the default SslContext instead of the SNI-specific context. In deployments where per-SNI clientAuth=REQUIRE is the sole mutual TLS gate, the default SslContext uses clientAuth=NONE or clientAuth=OPTIONAL, and no application-layer certificate verification exists, an unauthenticated remote attacker can bypass the protected route's mutual TLS requirement. This issue is fixed in versions 4.1.137.Final and 4.2.17.Final.
- CVE-2026-56817Critical
Netty versions 4.2.0.Final through 4.2.15.Final and 4.1.0.Final through 4.1.135.Final have a vulnerability in XmlDecoder where delivering XML with a DOCTYPE declaration to an AsyncXMLInputFactory without security configuration can activate DTD and entity handling, creating XML External Entity (XXE) risk.
- CVE-2021-21409Medium
Netty (io.netty:netty-codec-http2) before version 4.1.61.Final contains a vulnerability enabling request smuggling. The content-length header is not correctly validated if the request only uses a single Http2HeaderFrame with endStream set to true. This could lead to request smuggling if the request is proxied to a remote peer and translated to HTTP/1.1. This is a followup of GHSA-wm47-8v5p-wjpj/CVE-2021-21295 which missed to fix this one case. Fixed as part of 4.1.61.Final.
- CVE-2021-21295Medium
Netty (io.netty:netty-codec-http2) before version 4.1.60.Final contains a vulnerability enabling request smuggling. When an HTTP/2 request is converted to HTTP/1.1 by `Http2StreamFrameToHttpObjectCodec` and forwarded to a remote peer, the Content-Length header is not validated by `Http2MultiplexHandler`, allowing an attacker to smuggle additional requests within the body.
- CVE-2019-20445Critical
HttpObjectDecoder.java in Netty before 4.1.44 allows a Content-Length header to be accompanied by a second Content-Length header, or by a Transfer-Encoding header, which may lead to improper processing of HTTP requests.
- CVE-2019-20444Critical
HttpObjectDecoder.java in Netty before 4.1.44 allows an HTTP header that lacks a colon, which might be interpreted as a separate header with incorrect syntax or as an "invalid fold". This can lead to incorrect parsing of HTTP requests.
- CVE-2019-16869High
Netty before 4.1.42.Final mishandles whitespace before the colon in HTTP headers (such as a "Transfer-Encoding : chunked" line), which leads to HTTP request smuggling.
Original NVD description (English source)
Netty is an open-source, asynchronous event-driven network application framework for rapid development of maintainable high performance protocol servers & clients. In Netty before version 4.1.59.Final there is a vulnerability on Unix-like systems involving an insecure temp file. When netty's multipart decoders are used local information disclosure can occur via the local system temporary directory if temporary storing uploads on the disk is enabled. On unix-like systems, the temporary directory is shared between all user. As such, writing to this directory using APIs that do not explicitly set the file/directory permissions can lead to information disclosure. Of note, this does not impact modern MacOS Operating Systems. The method "File.createTempFile" on unix-like systems creates a random file, but, by default will create this file with the permissions "-rw-r--r--". Thus, if sensitive information is written to this file, other local users can read this information. This is the case in netty's "AbstractDiskHttpData" is vulnerable. This has been fixed in version 4.1.59.Final. As a workaround, one may specify your own "java.io.tmpdir" when you start the JVM or use "DefaultHttpDataFactory.setBaseDir(...)" to set the directory to something that is only readable by the current user.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

