Netty: Memory Exhaustion in RedisArrayAggregator due to Deeply Nested Arrays

Description

Summary

An attacker can cause DoS by sending a crafted Redis payload with deeply nested arrays. This forces the server to allocate a massive number of state objects and collections, leading to memory exhaustion and an OutOfMemoryError.

Details

io.netty.handler.codec.redis.RedisArrayAggregator aggregates RedisMessage parts into ArrayRedisMessage. It uses a Deque<AggregateState> to keep track of nested arrays. However, it does not limit the maximum depth of nested arrays. When an attacker sends a continuous stream of nested array headers (e.g., *1\r\n*1\r\n*1\r\n...), RedisArrayAggregator pushes a new AggregateState onto the stack and allocates a new ArrayList for each header. Because there is no depth limit, an attacker can send millions of such headers. This consumes a massive amount of heap memory for the AggregateState instances and their backing ArrayLists, eventually resulting in an OutOfMemoryError.

Impact

Denial of Service due to memory exhaustion. Any application using Netty's RedisArrayAggregator to handle untrusted Redis traffic is vulnerable.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
high
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2026-06-08 19:01:52 UTC
Updated
2026-06-12 19:27:12 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2026-06-08 19:01:52 UTC
NVD published
2026-06-11

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.04% 11.71%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
7.5 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Credits

  • violetagg (reporter)

Affected packages (2)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
maven io.netty:netty-codec-redis >= 4.2.0.Final, <= 4.2.14.Final 4.2.15.Final
maven io.netty:netty-codec-redis <= 4.1.134.Final 4.1.135.Final

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence