CVE-2026-43970 json
Decompression Bomb in cow_spdy:inflate/2 Allows Memory Exhaustion via Crafted SPDY Frame
published 2026-05-13 5 mo ago modified 2026-10-26 13 d ago also EEF-CVE-2026-43970 , EUVD-2026-30131 , GHSA-84f2-rp86-235p
- cvss
- 8.2
- version 4.0, CNA
- cisa kev
- Not listed
- not in CISA's catalog
- epss
- 0.5%
- EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 43%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via memory exhaustion.
cow_spdy:inflate/2 in cowlib passes peer-supplied compressed bytes directly to zlib:inflate/2 with no output size bound. The SPDY header compression dictionary (?ZDICT) is public, and zlib compresses long runs of repeated bytes at roughly 1024:1, so a few kilobytes of SPDY frame payload can decompress to gigabytes on the BEAM heap, OOM-killing the node. A single unauthenticated SPDY frame is sufficient to trigger the condition. The parsers for syn_stream, syn_reply, and headers frame types are all affected via cow_spdy:parse_headers/2.
This issue affects cowlib from 0.1.0 before 2.16.1.
Patch / fix
- hex cowlib 2.16.1
- ninenines cowlib 2.16.1
- erlang-cowlib Debian 14 2.17.1-1
debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43970
Vendor advisories
What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.
red hat product security vex CVE-2026-43970 updated cvss 7.5
cowlib: cowlib: Remote denial of service via data amplification in SPDY frame processing
-
Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat productsnot affected: vulnerable code not present
Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf
CISA SSVC
- Exploitation
- none
- Automatable
- no
- Technical impact
- partial
- Assessed
- 5 mo ago
Exploit prediction
0.51% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 43% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).
CVSS scores
| assigned by | version | score | vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | 4.0 | 8.2 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
| CNA | 4.0 | 8.2 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X |
Affected packages
| ecosystem | package | affected | fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| hex | cowlib | >=0.1.0, <2.16.1 |
2.16.1 |
Affected products
- ninenines cowlib
Classification
- Weakness
-
- CWE-409 Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)
References
-
github.com
/ninenines/cowlib/commit/16aad3fb9f81f5cda4d1706ff0c54237c619c282
patch, web
-
cna.erlef.org
/cves/CVE-2026-43970.html
related, third-party-advisory, web
-
osv.dev
/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-43970
related, web
-
nvd.nist.gov
/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-43970
advisory
-
github.com
/ninenines/cowlib
package
-
hex.pm
/packages/cowlib
package
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2026-43970
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-84f2-rp86-235p
- NVD CVE-2026-43970
- OSV EEF-CVE-2026-43970
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.
CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.