GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh
HIGHGHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in io.netty:netty-handler. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Netty: SNI handler pre-allocates up to 16 MiB from nine attacker bytes
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 358,265 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
io.netty:netty-handler☕io.netty:netty-handlerReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
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.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | io.netty:netty-handler | ≥ 4.2.0.Final&&< 4.2.15.Final | 4.2.15.Final |
| ☕Maven | io.netty:netty-handler | all versions | 4.1.135.Final |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for io.netty:netty-handler. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update io.netty:netty-handler to 4.2.15.Final or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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 vulnerability in Netty is rated as Important. It allows a remote attacker to trigger a denial of service by sending a specially crafted TLS ClientHello message. The flaw arises from an eager, unbounded memory allocation during the TLS handshake, particularly when default configurations disable the maximum client…
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-x4gw-5cx5-pgmh across Maven dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.