CVE-2026-78659

HTTP/2 server memory exhaustion due to Trailer headers in net/http

State
Published
Severity
7.5 High
Published
Oct 8, 2026
Updated
Oct 9, 2026
Reserved
Aug 24, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

When "Trailer" headers are sent by a client, the HTTP server internally uses the header values to populate the Request.Trailer map passed to the server handler. Because Request.Trailer is a map, each entry incurs memory overhead. For HTTP/2 servers, a malicious client can exploit this by sending a "Trailer" header that declares a large number of fields, causing the server to allocate a disproportionate amount of memory while bypassing Server.MaxHeaderValueCount and Server.MaxHeaderBytes limits. This exploit is not applicable for HTTP/1 servers, which do not support multiplexing a large number of requests over one TCP connection, and whose Server.MaxHeaderBytes are calculated differently.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCISA-ADP

Weaknesses

  • CWE-405 Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification)

Affected Products

ProductVersions
net/httpGo standard library
  • before 1.26.9Affected
net/http/internal/http2Go standard library
  • 1.27.0-0 to before 1.27.2Affected
golang.org/x/net/http2golang.org/x/net
  • before 0.60.0Affected

References

Every record here comes from the CVE Program’s CVE List. © 1999–2026 The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. The records are reproduced under the CVE Program terms of use.