Vulnerability details

5.3/10
CVSS 3.1
GHSA-mfg7-5gfp-c4w3
false_positive Published 2026-07-24 Updated 2026-08-13
Vulnerability Data from Dependency-Track
Description
### Summary A memory leak can be caused in Netty's DNS codec by sending malicious DNS packets containing invalid domain names. Because the leak occurs incrementally per packet, sustained malicious requests will cause a gradual Denial of Service. ### Details Inside `io.netty.handler.codec.dns.AbstractDnsRecord`, the parsed domain name string is passed to `IDN.toASCII(name)`. If the domain name contains characters that violate IDNA rules, `IDN.toASCII` throws an `IllegalArgumentException`. Because this exception occurs inside the constructor before the `DnsRecord` instance can assign the buffer to its content field for later release, the ByteBuf whose reference count was incremented (or newly allocated) is never released, resulting in a direct memory leak. There are several places where variants of this leak happen: - `io.netty.handler.codec.dns.DefaultDnsRecordDecoder#decodeRecord(java.lang.String, io.netty.handler.codec.dns.DnsRecordType, int, long, io.netty.buffer.ByteBuf, int, int)` invokes `in.retainedDuplicate()` or creates a new buffer `out` when constructing `DefaultDnsRawRecord` - `io.netty.handler.codec.dns.DnsCodecUtil#decompressDomainName` allocates a new `ByteBuf` and passes it to `encodeDomainName()`. If the decompressed domain name contains a null byte (`\0`), `encodeDomainName()` throws an `IllegalArgumentException`, leaking the newly allocated buffer. ### Impact Resource Exhaustion. Any application utilizing Netty's DnsRecordDecoder (such as DnsNameResolver or custom DNS servers) is vulnerable.
Same vulnerability as
CVE-2026-73508 resolved according to EUVD-2026-58086
Analysis Read only

CVE is a trademark and the CVE logo is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. CVE data may be incomplete, delayed, or inaccurate. This website and all information provided are offered on an “as is” basis without warranties of any kind. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the CVE Program or The MITRE Corporation.

This site uses data from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), obtained through Dependency-Track, but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD or the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NVD data may be incomplete, delayed, or inaccurate.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) is owned and managed by FIRST.Org, Inc. and used by permission. The links on CVSS vectors open the FIRST CVSS calculators (CVSS 3.0, 3.1 and 4.0), or the NVD calculator for CVSS 2.0. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by FIRST.

GitHub is a trademark of GitHub, Inc. GHSA identifiers and advisory data come from the GitHub Advisory Database, licensed under CC-BY 4.0. GHSA data may be incomplete, delayed, or inaccurate. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by GitHub, Inc.

Source of the EUVD data: European Vulnerability Database (EUVD), © European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), reused with acknowledgement of the source as provided by the ENISA legal notice and IPR policy. Changes: CVEManager does not display the EUVD records as such; it uses their aliases to link the CVE and GHSA identifiers designating the same vulnerability. EUVD data may be incomplete, delayed, or inaccurate. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ENISA or the European Union.