Absent Input Validation in BinaryHttpParser in the netty incubator codec.bhttp
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- High
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · High
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and GitHub.
Summary
The netty incubator codec.bhttp is a java language binary http parser. In affected versions the `BinaryHttpParser` class does not properly validate input values thus giving attackers almost complete control over the HTTP requests constructed from the parsed output. Attackers can abuse several issues individually to perform various injection attacks including HTTP request smuggling, desync attacks, HTTP header injections, request queue poisoning, caching attacks and Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF). Attacker could also combine several issues to create well-formed messages for other text-based protocols which may result in attacks beyond the HTTP protocol. The BinaryHttpParser class implements the readRequestHead method which performs most of the relevant parsing of the received request. The data structure prefixes values with a variable length integer value. The parsing code below first gets the lengths of the values from the prefixed variable length integer. After it has all of the lengths and calculates all of the indices, the parser casts the applicable slices of the ByteBuf to String. Finally, it passes these values into a new `DefaultBinaryHttpRequest` object where no further parsing or validation occurs. Method is partially validated while other values are not validated at all. Software that relies on netty to apply input validation for binary HTTP data may be vulnerable to various injection and protocol based attacks. This issue has been addressed in version 0.0.13.Final. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Total
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| netty | netty-incubator-codec-ohttp | before 0.0.13.Final | 0.0.13.Final | Patch available | CNA |
| — | io.netty.incubator:netty-incubator-codec-bhttp (Maven) | before 0.0.13.Final | 0.0.13.Final | Patch available | GHSA-q8f2-hxq5-cp4h |
- netty-incubator-codec-ohttp Vendornetty Affected before 0.0.13.Final Fixed in 0.0.13.Final Patch available CNA
- io.netty.incubator:netty-incubator-codec-bhttp (Maven) Vendor— Affected before 0.0.13.Final Fixed in 0.0.13.Final Patch available GHSA-q8f2-hxq5-cp4h
Remediation
- Fix · CNA netty-incubator-codec-ohttp (netty) Fixed in 0.0.13.Final
- Fix · GHSA-q8f2-hxq5-cp4h io.netty.incubator:netty-incubator-codec-bhttp (Maven) Fixed in 0.0.13.Final Advisory →
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2024-40642
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-q8f2-hxq5-cp4h
References
Exploit 1
Patch 1
More Netty-incubator-codec-ohttp vulnerabilities
- TI-2024-23951 netty-incubator-codec-ohttp's BoringSSLAEADContext Repeats Nonces CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.1
- TI-2026-35483 Out-of-bounds read in netty-incubator-codec-ohttp CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.8
- TI-2026-29826 netty-incubator-codec-ohttp's HPKEContext operations may produce empty byte[] on failures CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.9
Sources
- CVE-2024-40642 · CVE Program
- CVE-2024-40642 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-q8f2-hxq5-cp4h · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences