CVE-2026-43973 json
gun HTTP/1.1 response buffer has no size limit allowing server-controlled memory exhaustion
published 2026-06-08 5 mo ago modified 2026-08-18 2 mo ago also EEF-CVE-2026-43973 , GHSA-r53j-fjj5-mv77 , EUVD-2026-35074
- cvss
- 7.5
- version 3.1, NVD
- cisa kev
- Not listed
- not in CISA's catalog
- epss
- 0.5%
- EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 41%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ninenines gun (gun_http module) allows a malicious server to exhaust client memory via unbounded HTTP/1.1 response buffering.
In gun_http:handle/5, three clauses accumulate incoming TCP data into the connection's buffer field using binary concatenation with no upper-bound check: the head clause appends data until the \r\n\r\n header terminator is found; the body_chunked clause appends data whenever cow_http_te:stream_chunked/2 returns a more result indicating an incomplete chunk boundary; and the body_trailer clause appends data until the trailing \r\n\r\n is found. In each case, when the expected terminator never arrives, the enlarged binary is stored back into state and the process waits for more data, with no configurable or hard-coded ceiling on buffer size.
A malicious or compromised server can exploit this by sending a partial response that never completes. For example, a response may begin with HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\nX-Pad: followed by an unbounded stream of arbitrary bytes, never sending the header terminator. The gun connection process will continuously append the incoming data to its buffer, causing unbounded heap growth. Because BEAM imposes no per-process heap limit by default, a single malicious connection can exhaust all available memory on the node, causing a node-wide out-of-memory crash.
This issue affects gun: from 1.0.0 before 2.4.0.
Patch / fix
- hex gun 2.4.0
- ninenines gun 2.4.0
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-2026-43973 updated cvss 7.5
gun: gun: Denial of Service via unbounded HTTP/1.1 response buffering
-
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
- yes
- Technical impact
- partial
- Assessed
- 5 mo ago
Exploit prediction
0.48% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 41% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).
CVSS scores
| assigned by | version | score | vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | 4.0 | 8.7 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
| CNA | 4.0 | 8.7 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/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 |
| NVD | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| hex | gun | >=1.0.0, <2.4.0 |
2.4.0 |
Affected products
- ninenines gun
Classification
- Weakness
-
- CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
References
-
github.com
/ninenines/gun/commit/f3e7e0568b3c4cf9fa4bea79d5116e67ce76ad25
patch, web
-
osv.dev
/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-43973
related, web, third-party-advisory, patch
-
cna.erlef.org
/cves/CVE-2026-43973.html
related, third-party-advisory, web
-
nvd.nist.gov
/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-43973
advisory
-
github.com
/ninenines/gun
package
-
hex.pm
/packages/gun
package
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2026-43973
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-r53j-fjj5-mv77
- NVD CVE-2026-43973
- OSV EEF-CVE-2026-43973
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