CVE-2026-48006
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Elevated risk53th percentile - higher than 53% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability in the Netty library causes permanent leakage of pooled direct-memory buffers in the RedisArrayAggregator handler when a Redis pipeline connection closes before RESP array aggregation completes. The handler retains child messages without releasing them on channel inactivation, leading to exhaustion of the direct-memory pool. The issue is fixed in versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final.
Risk Assessment
The risk is that any network peer can exhaust the JVM's direct memory pool by repeatedly closing Redis connections, causing a denial of service (DoS) for all Netty channels in the process.
Recommendation
Immediately update Netty to version 4.1.135.Final or 4.2.15.Final. If an update is not possible, consider restricting access to Redis services or implementing connection timeouts.
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 a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. Prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, the RedisArrayAggregator handler permanently leaks pooled direct-memory buffers when a Redis pipeline connection closes before a RESP array aggregate completes. The handler retains child messages in per-handler state (`depths` field) but defines no `channelInactive`, `handlerRemoved`, or `exceptionCaught` method to release them when the pipeline tears down. Because the leaked buffers are slices of `PooledByteBufAllocator` chunks, they prevent those chunks from being returned to the JVM-wide direct-memory pool. Repeated connection churn by any network peer monotonically drains this shared pool, eventually causing allocation failures on all Netty channels in the process. Versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final patch the issue.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

