RHSA-2026:49700

Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. In netty-handler prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, an attacker can bypass IPv6 subnet rules due to an incorrect masking operation in IpSubnetFilterRule.compareTo(). Valid public IP addresses can bypass the restrictions. Versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final patch the issue.

Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. Prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, SslClientHelloHandler.decode() reads the 24-bit TLS handshake length and, when the ClientHello does not fit in the first record, eagerly allocates `ctx.alloc().buffer(handshakeLength)` (line 161). The guard at line 140 is `handshakeLength > maxClientHelloLength && maxClientHelloLength != 0`, and the commonly-used SniHandler/AbstractSniHandler constructors (SniHandler(Mapping), SniHandler(AsyncMapping), AbstractSniHandler()) pass maxClientHelloLength=0 and handshakeTimeoutMillis=0, so the length guard is disabled and no timeout is scheduled. A 16 MiB request exceeds the default pooled chunk size and becomes a huge/unpooled allocation performed immediately. The buffer is retained in the handler until the channel closes. Versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final patch the issue.

Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. Prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, Netty's DnsResolveContext fails to validate the origin (bailiwick) of CNAME records in DNS responses. Versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final patch the issue.

Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. Prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, Netty's `DnsResolveContext` insufficiently validates the bailiwick of NS records, enabling DNS Cache Poisoning. An attacker controlling an authoritative name server for a subdomain can poison the cache for parent domains (like `.co.uk`). In `io.netty.resolver.dns.DnsResolveContext.AuthoritativeNameServerList#add` method accepts any NS record from the AUTHORITY section as long as the record's name is a suffix of the questionName. Subsequently, the `handleWithAdditional` method caches the associated A records from the ADDITIONAL section directly into the `authoritativeDnsServerCache` under the parent domain's key. This bypasses standard bailiwick rules, where a server authoritative for a subdomain should not be trusted to provide authoritative records for its parent. The poisoned cache is then used for all future resolutions under the parent domain's key. Versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final patch the issue.

Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. Prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, SimpleTrustManagerFactory.engineGetTrustManagers() and related paths wrap any user-supplied plain X509TrustManager in X509TrustManagerWrapper, which extends X509ExtendedTrustManager but implements the 3-arg checkServerTrusted(chain, authType, SSLEngine) by discarding the SSLEngine and calling the 2-arg delegate. Because the object now IS an X509ExtendedTrustManager, neither SunJSSE's internal AbstractTrustManagerWrapper nor Netty's own OpenSslX509TrustManagerWrapper will re-wrap it to add endpoint-identification. Consequently, even though Netty 4.2 sets endpointIdentificationAlgorithm="HTTPS" by default, a client built with `SslContextBuilder.forClient().trustManager(somePlainX509TrustManager)` performs no hostname verification at all. Versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final patch the issue.

Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, Netty's HttpProxyHandler constructs HTTP CONNECT requests with header validation explicitly disabled. The newInitialMessage() method creates headers using DefaultHttpHeadersFactory.headersFactory().withValidation(false), then adds user-provided outboundHeaders without any CRLF validation. This allows an attacker who can influence the outbound headers to inject arbitrary HTTP headers into the CONNECT request sent to the proxy server. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.

Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, HttpClientCodec pairs each inbound response with an outbound request by queue.poll() once per response, including for 1xx. If the client pipelines GET then HEAD and the server sends 103, then 200 with GET body, then 200 for HEAD, the queue pairs HEAD with the first 200. The HEAD rule then skips reading that message’s body, so the GET entity bytes stay on the stream and the following 200 is parsed from the wrong offset. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.

Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, Netty incorrectly parses malformed Transfer-Encoding, enabling request smuggling attacks. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.

Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, HttpObjectDecoder strips a conflicting Content-Length header when a request carries both Transfer-Encoding: chunked and Content-Length, but only for HTTP/1.1 messages. The guard is absent for HTTP/1.0. An attacker that sends an HTTP/1.0 request with both headers causes Netty to decode the body as chunked while leaving Content-Length intact in the forwarded HttpMessage. Any downstream proxy or handler that trusts Content-Length over Transfer-Encoding will disagree on message boundaries, enabling request smuggling. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.

Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, HttpContentDecompressor accepts a maxAllocation parameter to limit decompression buffer size and prevent decompression bomb attacks. This limit is correctly enforced for gzip and deflate encodings via ZlibDecoder, but is silently ignored when the content encoding is br (Brotli), zstd, or snappy. An attacker can bypass the configured decompression limit by sending a compressed payload with Content-Encoding: br instead of Content-Encoding: gzip, causing unbounded memory allocation and out-of-memory denial of service. The same vulnerability exists in DelegatingDecompressorFrameListener for HTTP/2 connections. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.

Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, Netty's DNS codec does not enforce RFC 1035 domain name constraints during either encoding or decoding. This creates a bidirectional attack surface: malicious DNS responses can exploit the decoder, and user-influenced hostnames can exploit the encoder. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.