CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-45352

MediumCVSS 5.3
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.33%

25th percentile - higher than 25% of all known CVEs

Summary

cpp-httplib prior to 0.43.4 has a vulnerability related to negative chunk-size in chunked Transfer-Encoding. The ChunkedDecoder::read_payload function parses the chunk-size field using std::strtoul(), which accepts a leading minus sign, causing unsigned wrap-around. The library only rejects -1, but other negative values like -2 pass validation, leading to unbounded memory allocation and process crash.

Risk Assessment

An attacker can crash the HTTP server by sending a crafted request with a negative chunk size.

Recommendation

Update cpp-httplib to version 0.43.4 or later.

Other vulnerabilities in cpp-httplib

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

cpp-httplib is a C++11 single-file header-only cross platform HTTP/HTTPS library. Prior to 0.43.4, negative chunk-size in chunked Transfer-Encoding causes unbounded memory allocation and process crash. The ChunkedDecoder::read_payload function in cpp-httplib (httplib.h) parses the chunk-size field of HTTP chunked transfer encoding using std::strtoul(). Per the C standard (§7.22.1.4), strtoul silently accepts a leading minus sign, performing unsigned wrap-around: strtoul("-2", …, 16) returns ULONG_MAX − 1 (0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFE). The library's only guard (line 12833) rejects ULONG_MAX (the result of "-1"), but any other negative value such as "-2" passes validation. The resulting near-maximum value is stored in chunk_remaining and controls how many bytes the server's read loop consumes from the network. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.43.4.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS