HTTP/2 rapid reset can cause excessive work in net/httpGHSA-4374-p667-p6c8
HIGHGHSA-4374-p667-p6c8 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in golang.org/x/net. A fix is available for golang.org/x/net — see the affected versions and patch details below.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
golang.org/x/netReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
A malicious HTTP/2 client which rapidly creates requests and immediately resets them can cause excessive server resource consumption. While the total number of requests is bounded by the http2.Server.MaxConcurrentStreams setting, resetting an in-progress request allows the attacker to create a new request while the existing one is still executing.
With the fix applied, HTTP/2 servers now bound the number of simultaneously executing handler goroutines to the stream concurrency limit (MaxConcurrentStreams). New requests arriving when at the limit (which can only happen after the client has reset an existing, in-flight request) will be queued until a handler exits. If the request queue grows too large, the server will terminate the connection.
This issue is also fixed in golang.org/x/net/http2 for users manually configuring HTTP/2.
The default stream concurrency limit is 250 streams (requests) per HTTP/2 connection. This value may be adjusted using the golang.org/x/net/http2 package; see the Server.MaxConcurrentStreams setting and the ConfigureServer function.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | golang.org/x/net | all versions | 0.17.0go get golang.org/x/net@v0.17.0 |
Affected Products
fedorafedoraprojectgogolanghttp2golangastra tridentnetappastra trident autosupportnetappDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for golang.org/x/net, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update golang.org/x/net to 0.17.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-4374-p667-p6c8 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
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.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This CVE is related to CVE-2023-44487. The majority of RHEL utilities are not long-running applications; instead, they are command-line tools. These tools utilize Golang package as build-time dependency, which is why they are classified as having a "Moderate" level of impact. As go-lang vendors its dependencies, a…
The default stream concurrency limit in golang is 250 streams (requests) per HTTP/2 connection. This value may be adjusted in the golang.org/x/net/http2 package using the Server.MaxConcurrentStreams setting and the ConfigureServer function which are available in golang.org/x/net/http2.Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-4374-p667-p6c8 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| 3scale API Management 2.13 on RHEL 7 | 3scale-amp2/3scale-rhel7-operator:1.16.7-2 | RHEA-2023:7327 |
| CERT-MANAGER-1.11-RHEL-9 | cert-manager/cert-manager-operator-rhel9:v1.11.5-5 | RHSA-2023:6279 |
| CERT-MANAGER-1.12-RHEL-9 | cert-manager/cert-manager-operator-rhel9:v1.12.1-5 | RHSA-2023:6269 |
| Cryostat 2 on RHEL 8 | cryostat-tech-preview/cryostat-rhel8-operator:2.3.1-11 | RHSA-2023:6031 |
| Fence Agents Remediation 0.2 for RHEL 8 | workload-availability/fence-agents-remediation-rhel8-operator:v0.2.1-7 | RHSA-2023:6786 |
| Ironic content for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.12 | python-werkzeug-0:2.0.3-5.el9 | RHSA-2023:7610 |
| Ironic content for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.13 | openstack-ironic-1:21.3.1-0.20231106145533.e53dc4f.el9 | RHSA-2023:7325 |
| KDO-5.0-RHEL-9 | kube-descheduler-operator/descheduler-rhel9:v5.0-17 | RHSA-2024:0302 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-4374-p667-p6c8 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.