Decompression Bomb in cow_spdy:inflate/2 Allows Memory Exhaustion via Crafted SPDY Frame
Summary
| CVE | CVE-2026-43970 |
|---|---|
| State | PUBLISHED |
| Assigner | EEF |
| Source Priority | CVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback |
| Published | 2026-05-13 19:17:25 UTC |
| Updated | 2026-05-14 17:07:07 UTC |
| Description | Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via memory exhaustion. cow_spdy:inflate/2 in cowlib passes peer-supplied compressed bytes directly to zlib:inflate/2 with no output size bound. The SPDY header compression dictionary (?ZDICT) is public, and zlib compresses long runs of repeated bytes at roughly 1024:1, so a few kilobytes of SPDY frame payload can decompress to gigabytes on the BEAM heap, OOM-killing the node. A single unauthenticated SPDY frame is sufficient to trigger the condition. The parsers for syn_stream, syn_reply, and headers frame types are all affected via cow_spdy:parse_headers/2. This issue affects cowlib from 0.1.0 before 2.16.1. |
Risk And Classification
Primary CVSS: v4.0 8.2 HIGH from 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
EPSS: 0.001830000 probability, percentile 0.396480000 (date 2026-05-25)
Problem Types: CWE-409 | CWE-409 CWE-409 Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)
| Version | Source | Type | Score | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db | Secondary | 8.2 | HIGH | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/C... |
| 4.0 | CNA | CVSS | 8.2 | HIGH | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
CVSS v4.0 Breakdown
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
Vendor Declared Affected Products
References
| Reference | Source | Link | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| github.com/ninenines/cowlib/commit/16aad3fb9f81f5cda4d1706ff0c54237c619c282 | 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db | github.com | |
| cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-43970.html | 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db | cna.erlef.org | |
| osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-43970 | 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db | osv.dev | |
| CVE Program record | CVE.ORG | www.cve.org | canonical |
| NVD vulnerability detail | NVD | nvd.nist.gov | canonical, analysis |
Vendor Comments And Credit
Discovery Credit
CNA: Peter Ullrich (en)
CNA: Loïc Hoguin (en)
Additional Advisory Data
Solutions
CNA: Upgrade to cowlib 2.16.1 or later, in which the cow_spdy module has been removed entirely. No patched version of cow_spdy will be provided. Migrate away from SPDY, which has been deprecated since 2015 in favour of HTTP/2.