HTTP/1 chunked body reader ignores length cap in bandit
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Attack requirements
- None
- Impact type
- Denial of service
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · None · High
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 4.0 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and GitHub. Impact type from CWE-770.
Summary
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in mtrudel bandit allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via memory exhaustion. The chunked clause of 'Elixir.Bandit.HTTP1.Socket':read_data/2 in lib/bandit/http1/socket.ex ignores the caller-supplied :length option when reading HTTP/1 chunked request bodies. Instead of capping the accumulated body at the configured limit (e.g. Plug.Parsers' default 8 MB), do_read_chunked_data!/5 buffers every received chunk into an iolist unconditionally and materializes the entire body as a single binary. The function always returns {:ok, body, ...}, so callers cannot interpose a 413 response. Because Plug.Parsers runs before routing and authentication in the standard Phoenix endpoint, an unauthenticated attacker needs no valid route or credentials. Sending a single Transfer-Encoding: chunked POST request with an arbitrarily large body to any path causes the BEAM process to exhaust available memory and be terminated by the OS OOM killer. The content-length path in the same function correctly enforces the limit and is not affected. This issue affects bandit: from 1.4.0 before 1.11.1.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- Poc
- Automatable
- Yes
- Technical impact
- Partial
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mtrudel | bandit | 1.4.0 to before 1.11.1 | 1.11.1 | Patch available | CNA |
| — | bandit (Hex) | 1.4.0 to before 1.11.1 | 1.11.1 | Patch available | GHSA-9q9q-324x-93r2 |
- bandit Vendormtrudel Affected 1.4.0 to before 1.11.1 Fixed in 1.11.1 Patch available CNA
- bandit (Hex) Vendor— Affected 1.4.0 to before 1.11.1 Fixed in 1.11.1 Patch available GHSA-9q9q-324x-93r2
Remediation
- Fix · CNA bandit (mtrudel) Fixed in 1.11.1
- Fix · GHSA-9q9q-324x-93r2 bandit (Hex) Fixed in 1.11.1 Advisory →
Fixed in the same release
Records fixed by the same vendor advisory or release, as the CNA lists them.
- Release ·
mtrudel bandit 1.11.1, ae3520dfdbfab115c638f8c7f6f6b805db34e1ab
2 records Highest priority Priority HIGH 2 HIGH
Other records, highest priority first
- TI-2026-28689 HTTP/1 chunked decoder infinite loop on requests with trailer fields in banditPriority HIGH 77
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-39803
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-9q9q-324x-93r2
References
Advisory 3
More mtrudel Bandit vulnerabilities
- TI-2026-28689 HTTP/1 chunked decoder infinite loop on requests with trailer fields in bandit CVSS 4.0HIGH 8.7
Sources
- CVE-2026-39803 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-39803 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-9q9q-324x-93r2 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
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