Denial of Service Vulnerability in Netty Through Compression Decoding

CVE-2025-58057

What is CVE-2025-58057?

CVE-2025-58057 is a significant denial of service vulnerability found in the Netty framework, which is a popular open-source solution designed for developing high-performance network applications. It is widely utilized for building maintainable protocol servers and clients due to its asynchronous event-driven architecture. The flaw specifically affects certain versions of the netty-codec-compression and netty-codec libraries, where certain decompression decoders, including the BrotliDecoder, can be exploited when given specially crafted inputs. These decoders lack a mechanism to limit the frequency of calls made during the decompression process, which can lead to excessive allocation of byte buffers. This unregulated buffer allocation can eventually exhaust system memory, resulting in a denial of service that disrupts the availability of applications that rely on the Netty framework.

Potential impact of CVE-2025-58057

1. Denial of Service: The primary impact of CVE-2025-58057 is the potential for denial of service, which can render affected applications unavailable. This can disrupt critical services running on servers, leading to financial losses and diminished user trust for organizations relying on these systems.

2. Resource Exhaustion: The vulnerability can lead to significant resource exhaustion on servers, as memory is consumed by numerous unreachable byte buffers. This may not only impact the immediate application but also affect adjacent services and applications on the same infrastructure, leading to broader operational challenges.

3. Increased Attack Surface: By exploiting this vulnerability, attackers can create conditions that provoke cascading failures within an application ecosystem. This increases the overall attack surface, as compromised systems may be used as footholds for further exploits, potentially endangering other interconnected systems and sensitive data.

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