CVE-2026-100662 — Netty
HIGHCVE-2026-100662 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Netty's HTTP/3 codec (io.netty:netty-codec-http3) versions 4.2.0.Final through 4.2.17.Final contain an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in the QPACK encoder-stream instruction…
Description
Netty's HTTP/3 codec (io.netty:netty-codec-http3) versions 4.2.0.Final through 4.2.17.Final contain an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in the QPACK encoder-stream instruction decoder (QpackEncoderHandler, installed on the peer-initiated unidirectional QPACK encoder stream, type 0x02). The handler accepts an attacker-declared string-literal length of up to Integer.MAX_VALUE (~2 GiB) for the Name Length and Value Length fields of the "Insert With Literal Name" instruction (RFC 9204 §4.3.3), with no per-instruction or per-literal length cap and no cumulation-size limit; the existing HTTP/3 limits (maxHeaderListSize, maxUnknownFramePayloadLength, DEFAULT_MAX_FIELD_SECTION_SIZE) are not applied to this handler. A remote, unauthenticated peer with an established HTTP/3 connection to a default Netty HTTP/3 server can declare a very large literal length and then trickle fewer bytes than declared, causing the ByteToMessageDecoder MERGE cumulator to retain and grow the per-connection buffer, and ultimately triggering a large byte-array allocation. This leads to unbounded per-connection heap growth and OutOfMemoryError, resulting in denial of service. Fixed in 4.2.18.Final.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`). Because exploitation targets the running service rather than your application code, O3 also flags the exploit behaviour from runtime telemetry and egress traffic.
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2026-100662 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service. O3's runtime protection blocks the uncontrolled resource consumption flaw at execution, which holds the line on hosts you cannot patch immediately.
How O3 protects you
O3 detects and blocks CVE-2026-100662 exploitation at runtime with eBPF exploit-chain detection, plus L7 egress monitoring that catches a post-exploitation callback and cuts the attacker's outbound channel.
Tailored to CVE-2026-100662. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-100662 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-100662 across dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.