Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, the MQTT 5 header Properties section is parsed and buffered before any message size limit is applied. Specifically, in MqttDecoder, the decodeVariableHeader() method is called before the bytesRemainingBeforeVariableHeader > maxBytesInMessage check. The decodeVariableHeader() can call other methods which will call decodeProperties(). Effectively, Netty does not apply any limits to the size of the properties being decoded. Additionally, because MqttDecoder extends ReplayingDecoder, Netty will repeatedly re-parse the enormous Properties sections and buffer the bytes in memory, until the entire thing parses to completion. This can cause high resource usage in both CPU and memory. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.

Project Subscriptions

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Advisories
Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-jfg9-48mv-9qgx Netty MQTT: Resource exhaustion in MqttDecoder
Fixes

Solution

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Workaround

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History

Wed, 13 May 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, the MQTT 5 header Properties section is parsed and buffered before any message size limit is applied. Specifically, in MqttDecoder, the decodeVariableHeader() method is called before the bytesRemainingBeforeVariableHeader > maxBytesInMessage check. The decodeVariableHeader() can call other methods which will call decodeProperties(). Effectively, Netty does not apply any limits to the size of the properties being decoded. Additionally, because MqttDecoder extends ReplayingDecoder, Netty will repeatedly re-parse the enormous Properties sections and buffer the bytes in memory, until the entire thing parses to completion. This can cause high resource usage in both CPU and memory. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.
Title Netty: Resource exhaustion in MqttDecoder
Weaknesses CWE-400
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 5.3, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L'}


Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-05-13T19:16:58.429Z

Reserved: 2026-05-05T16:33:55.844Z

Link: CVE-2026-44248

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-05-13T19:17:27.143

Modified: 2026-05-13T19:17:27.143

Link: CVE-2026-44248

cve-icon Redhat

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cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

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Weaknesses