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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2021-21294 json

Unbounded connection acceptance in http4s-blaze-server

published 2021-02-02 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-xhv5-w9c5-2r2w , EUVD-2021-0578

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.2%
EPSS 2.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 82%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Http4s (http4s-blaze-server) is a minimal, idiomatic Scala interface for HTTP services. Http4s before versions 0.21.17, 0.22.0-M2, and 1.0.0-M14 have a vulnerability which can lead to a denial-of-service. Blaze-core, a library underlying http4s-blaze-server, accepts connections unboundedly on its selector pool. This has the net effect of amplifying degradation in services that are unable to handle their current request load, since incoming connections are still accepted and added to an unbounded queue. Each connection allocates a socket handle, which drains a scarce OS resource. This can also confound higher level circuit breakers which work based on detecting failed connections. http4s provides a general "MaxActiveRequests" middleware mechanism for limiting open connections, but it is enforced inside the Blaze accept loop, after the connection is accepted and the socket opened. Thus, the limit only prevents the number of connections which can be simultaneously processed, not the number of connections which can be held open. In 0.21.17, 0.22.0-M2, and 1.0.0-M14, a new "maxConnections" property, with a default value of 1024, has been added to the `BlazeServerBuilder`. Setting the value to a negative number restores unbounded behavior, but is strongly disrecommended. The NIO2 backend does not respect `maxConnections`. Its use is now deprecated in http4s-0.21, and the option is removed altogether starting in http4s-0.22. There are several possible workarounds described in the refrenced GitHub Advisory GHSA-xhv5-w9c5-2r2w.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.http4s:http4s-blaze-server_2.12 0.21.17
  • maven org.http4s:http4s-blaze-server_2.13 0.21.17
  • typelevel http4s 0.21.17

Exploit prediction

2.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 82% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
GitHub 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.http4s:http4s-blaze-server_2.12
<0.21.17
0.21.17
maven org.http4s:http4s-blaze-server_2.13
<0.21.17
0.21.17

Affected products

  • http4s http4s

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.