CVE-2026-78048
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Elevated risk50th percentile - higher than 50% of all known CVEs
Summary
A reachable-assertion flaw in the HPACK header-compression decoder of the HTTP/2 (h2/gRPC) stack in Apache bRPC (version < 1.18.0) allows a remote attacker to crash the server process by sending a crafted sequence of HPACK headers, resulting in a denial of service. The root cause is an incorrect dynamic-table ring buffer sizing (34 instead of 33 bytes per entry), which leads to overflow and a CHECK abort.
Risk Assessment
The organization is exposed to denial-of-service attacks against bRPC servers serving HTTP/2 or gRPC requests from untrusted networks, potentially causing service unavailability and application disruptions.
Recommendation
Upgrade Apache bRPC to version 1.18.0 or apply the patch from https://github.com/apache/brpc/pull/3462, and until deployment restrict access to HTTP/2/gRPC servers to trusted networks only.
Other vulnerabilities in Apache bRPC
See all- CVE-2026-86249Critical
On a brpc::Server that sets both ServerOptions.auth and ServerOptions.internal_port, the HTTP built-in service exemption on internal_port can be abused to bypass authentication entirely. Verification runs only for the first message of a connection and the result latches the connection, so a request such as GET /status to internal_port authenticates the whole connection.
- CVE-2026-78334Critical
Missing authentication in the streaming RPC path of Apache bRPC (version < 1.18.0) allows a remote attacker to bypass server authentication and inject or deliver streaming frames when a server is configured with an Authenticator. Streaming frames never pass through the authentication hook, and streams can be impersonated by another socket carrying the same id.
- CVE-2026-56388Critical
The Redis server command parser in Apache bRPC accepts an empty RESP array as a command header. A remote unauthenticated attacker can send an empty array header followed by a bulk string, causing an out-of-bounds write in the parser and crashing the process.
- CVE-2026-48830Critical
Improper authentication in Apache bRPC through 1.17.0 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to bypass authentication for protected builtin HTTP endpoints by first sending a builtin HTTP request on the same HTTP/1.1 keep-alive connection. When ServerOptions.auth is enabled and builtin HTTP services are publicly exposed, the first builtin request may mark the connection as authenticated for later requests.
- CVE-2025-60021Critical
Remote command injection vulnerability in heap profiler builtin service in Apache bRPC (all versions < 1.15.0) on all platforms allows attacker to inject remote command. Root Cause: The bRPC heap profiler built-in service (/pprof/heap) does not validate the user-provided extra_options parameter and executes it as a command-line argument. Attackers can execute remote commands using the extra_options parameter. Affected scenarios: Use the built-in bRPC heap profiler service to perform jemalloc memory profiling. How to Fix: we provide two methods, you can choose one of them: 1. Upgrade bRPC to version 1.15.0. 2. Apply this patch ( https://github.com/apache/brpc/pull/3101 ) manually.
- CVE-2023-31039Critical
Apache bRPC < 1.5.0 on all platforms allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via the ServerOptions::pid_file parameter. An attacker who can influence this parameter when starting the bRPC server can execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the bRPC process.
- CVE-2026-90484Medium
The MySQL client response parser in Apache bRPC dereferences a null pointer when the server peer sends a zero-payload-length response packet. A packet with declared zero payload length passes the frame-length check, after which the parser reads the response type byte via an unbounded 5-byte fetch that returns nullptr, causing type = p[4] to dereference it and crash the client process.
- CVE-2026-87849Medium
A vulnerability in the Discovery naming-service reply parser in Apache bRPC (versions < 1.18.0) calls RapidJSON object-only accessors (FindMember) on JSON values without first validating that they are objects. A malformed Discovery response whose data/service members or instances list contain non-object entries triggers an out-of-bounds read and potentially crashes the bRPC client.
- CVE-2026-86147High
Apache bRPC versions before 1.18.0 expose builtin /flags and /pprof services that allow a remote attacker to change dump paths (bvar_dump_file, bvar_dump_tabs, mbvar_dump_file) and create directories or overwrite files with the server process privileges. Additionally, the ?seconds= parameter in /pprof is not clamped, enabling an attacker to hold the process-wide CPU profiler for an arbitrarily long time.
- CVE-2026-86146High
HTTP request/response smuggling vulnerability in Apache bRPC versions < 1.18.0 stems from inconsistent HTTP/1.1 header parsing in its bundled parser. bRPC accepts malformed header forms (space before colon, spaces in Content-Length values, obs-fold, chunked trailers merged as headers, Transfer-Encoding lists with whitespace), allowing attackers to smuggle requests or headers when bRPC is deployed behind a proxy or load balancer.
Original NVD description (English source)
A reachable-assertion flaw in the HPACK header-compression decoder of the HTTP/2 (h2/gRPC) stack in Apache bRPC (version < 1.18.0) on all platforms allows a remote attacker to crash the server process by sending a crafted sequence of HPACK headers, resulting in a denial of service. Root Cause: In src/brpc/details/hpack.cpp, IndexTable::Init sizes the dynamic-table ring buffer as num_headers = max_size / (32 + 2), i.e. it assumes a minimum table entry of 34 bytes (name >= 1 byte + value >= 1 byte + 32 bytes of overhead). However, RFC 7541 section 4.1 specifies that the minimum entry size is 33 bytes, because the value may be empty (name >= 1 byte + value == 0 + 32 bytes). For the default 4096-byte table this allocates only 120 slots (4096/34). Eviction in AddHeader is driven by byte usage (_max_size), not by slot count, so a peer can add 121 minimal 33-byte entries (121*33 = 3993 <= 4096) without triggering eviction. The 121st AddHeader then hits CHECK(!_header_queue.full()), which aborts the process. Affected Scenarios: Use a bRPC server that serves HTTP/2 or gRPC requests (e.g. via the h2 protocol) from an untrusted network. The malicious header block is processed during HPACK decoding of incoming requests without authentication. How to Fix: (Choose one of the following options) 1. Upgrade bRPC to version 1.18.0, which fixes this issue. 2. Apply this patch: https://github.com/apache/brpc/pull/3462 Note: The fix sizes the dynamic table for the 33-byte minimum entry (max_size / (32 + 1)) and ensures at least one ring-buffer slot is kept when max_size is smaller than the minimum entry, so that initialization cannot fail on malloc(0).
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

