Buffa: Memory Exhaustion Denial of Service in decode_unknown_field via Unbounded Allocation
Summary
| CVE | CVE-2026-55407 |
|---|---|
| State | PUBLISHED |
| Assigner | GitHub_M |
| Source Priority | CVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback |
| Published | 2026-07-16 17:16:57 UTC |
| Updated | 2026-07-16 19:16:50 UTC |
| Description | Buffa is a pure-Rust Protocol Buffers implementation with first-class protobuf editions support. Prior to 0.8.0, the decode_unknown_field function in buffa's protobuf decoder allocated heap memory in proportion to untrusted input (unknown fields in the serialized protobuf) without enforcing an allocation budget, affecting any message decoded from untrusted input using code generated with preserve_unknown_fields=true (the default); a small, well-formed payload of nested unknown fields inside a StartGroup could trigger roughly 22x memory amplification (for example a 64 MiB input forcing about 1.4 GB of heap allocation), and length-delimited unknown fields could be sized arbitrarily, so an unauthenticated attacker could crash a process through memory exhaustion because the top-level message size cap did not account for in-decode amplification. This issue is fixed in version 0.8.0. |
Risk And Classification
Primary CVSS: v4.0 6.3 MEDIUM from [email protected]
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/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: 0.005650000 probability, percentile 0.431530000 (date 2026-07-17)
Problem Types: CWE-400 | CWE-770 | CWE-789 | CWE-400 CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption | CWE-770 CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling | CWE-789 CWE-789: Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value
| Version | Source | Type | Score | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | [email protected] | Secondary | 6.3 | MEDIUM | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/C... |
| 4.0 | CNA | DECLARED | 6.3 | MEDIUM | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
CVSS v4.0 Breakdown
Attack Vector
NetworkAttack Complexity
LowAttack Requirements
PresentPrivileges Required
NoneUser Interaction
NoneConfidentiality
NoneIntegrity
NoneAvailability
LowSub Conf.
NoneSub Integrity
NoneSub Availability
NoneCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/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
| Source | Vendor | Product | Version | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | Anthropics | Buffa | affected < 0.8.0 | Not specified |
References
| Reference | Source | Link | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| github.com/anthropics/buffa/security/advisories/GHSA-f9qc-qg88-7pq5 | [email protected] | github.com | |
| github.com/anthropics/buffa/commit/278fa43fcff661d4ee6bd83b75955a153d4281fc | [email protected] | github.com | |
| github.com/anthropics/buffa/pull/184 | [email protected] | github.com | |
| github.com/anthropics/buffa/releases/tag/v0.8.0 | [email protected] | github.com | |
| CVE Program record | CVE.ORG | www.cve.org | canonical |
| NVD vulnerability detail | NVD | nvd.nist.gov | canonical, analysis |
No vendor comments have been submitted for this CVE.
There are currently no legacy QID mappings associated with this CVE.