GHSA-32p9-57cr-4x65

Suggest an improvement
Source
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-32p9-57cr-4x65
Import Source
https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/05/GHSA-32p9-57cr-4x65/GHSA-32p9-57cr-4x65.json
JSON Data
https://api.osv.dev/v1/vulns/GHSA-32p9-57cr-4x65
Aliases
Published
2026-05-11T21:31:35Z
Modified
2026-05-18T17:11:03.404309115Z
Severity
  • 8.7 (High) CVSS_V4 - CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N CVSS Calculator
Summary
cowlib cow_http_te module: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability allows Excessive Allocation
Details

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ninenines cowlib (cowhttpte module) allows Excessive Allocation.

The chunked transfer-encoding parser in cowhttpte accepts an unbounded number of hex digits in the chunk-size field. Each digit causes a bignum multiplication (Len * 16 + digit), so parsing N hex digits requires O(N²) CPU work and O(N) memory. Additionally, when input is drip-fed, the parser discards the accumulated length on each partial read and restarts from zero on resumption, raising the cost to O(N³). An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this by sending an HTTP/1.1 request with Transfer-Encoding: chunked and a very long chunk-size hex string to cause denial of service through CPU exhaustion and memory amplification.

This vulnerability is associated with program file src/cowhttpte.erl and program routines cowhttpte:streamchunked/2, cowhttpte:chunkedlen/4.

This issue affects cowlib: from 0.6.0 before 2.16.1.

Database specific 
{
    "nvd_published_at": "2026-05-11T19:16:29Z",
    "severity": "HIGH",
    "cwe_ids": [
        "CWE-400"
    ],
    "github_reviewed": true,
    "github_reviewed_at": "2026-05-18T16:49:21Z"
}
References

Affected packages

Hex / cowlib

Package

Name
cowlib
Purl
pkg:hex/cowlib

Affected ranges

Type
SEMVER
Events
Introduced
0.6.0
Fixed
2.16.1

Affected versions

1.*
1.0.0
1.0.1
1.0.2
1.1.0
1.2.0
1.3.0
2.*
2.0.0
2.0.1
2.1.0
2.2.0
2.2.1
2.3.0
2.4.0
2.5.0
2.5.1
2.6.0
2.7.0
2.7.1
2.7.2
2.7.3
2.8.0
2.9.0
2.9.1
2.10.0
2.10.1
2.11.0
2.12.0
2.12.1
2.13.0
2.14.0
2.15.0
2.16.0

Database specific

source 
"https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/05/GHSA-32p9-57cr-4x65/GHSA-32p9-57cr-4x65.json"