CVE-2026-113431: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows an unauthenticated remote peer to exhaust the memory of an HTTP/2

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows an unauthenticated remote peer to exhaust the memory of an HTTP/2

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows an unauthenticated remote peer to exhaust the memory of an HTTP/2 endpoint via HPACK-indexed header fields. cow_http2_machine:headers_decode/4 in src/cow_http2_machine.erl decodes every HEADERS block with cow_hpack:decode/3. It bounds the compressed block size and the number of fields, but not the size of the decoded header list that RFC 9113 section 6.5.2 places under SETTINGS_MAX_HEADER_LIST_SIZE. A peer stores one header value of up to the dynamic table size (4096 bytes by default) and then references it with one-byte indexed fields, so about 100 bytes on the wire decode to a header list of about 390 KB. A consumer that copies the decoded values, as Cowboy does when cowboy_http2:headers_to_map/2 joins repeated cookie fields into one binary, allocates that amount for every stream. The total across streams and connections is not bounded. This issue affects cowlib: from 2.7.0 onward.

Description from the National Vulnerability Database, published by 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db

What it means for a small business

If your business uses cowlib, install the vendor's update. If you're not sure whether you use it, ask whoever manages your computers.

Check your own setup

Website check: reads what your site runs from the outside (WordPress version, plugins it can see, old server software) and matches it against this database.
Server check: what your web server says about itself, and whether that version has known flaws.

Sources

Part of the Huttenlocher Technologies vulnerability database, refreshed twice a day from CISA and the NVD. The title, category and plain-language guidance are ours; check the linked record before acting on a detail. This is general guidance, not a review of your systems.

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