gRPC-Go: xDS RBAC and HTTP/2 Vulnerabilities

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Multiple security vulnerabilities have been identified and addressed in grpc-go affecting the xDS RBAC authorization engine (internal/xds/rbac) and the HTTP/2 transport server implementation (internal/transport). These vulnerabilities could result in: - Authorization Bypass (Fail-Open) when translating xDS RBAC policies containing `Metadata` or `RequestedServerName` fields. - Denial of Service (High CPU Consumption) due to an HTTP/2 Rapid Reset mitigation bypass during client-initiated stream resets. - Denial of Service (Server Panic) when parsing crafted xDS RBAC policies containing `NOT` rules around unsupported fields. ### Impact _What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?_ #### xDS RBAC Authorization Bypass via `Metadata` & `RequestedServerName` matchers - Affected Component: xDS RBAC - Impact: When building policy matchers for gRPC RBAC from xDS configurations, unsupported `permission` and `principal` rules (specifically `Metadata` and `RequestedServerName`) were silently ignored and treated as no-ops. - If an authorization policy relied purely on these matchers for access control, treating those rules as no-ops effectively removed the restrictions. - If these unsupported rules were nested inside logical `NOT` rules (`Permission_NotRule` / `Principal_NotId`) or multi-condition `OR/AND` rules, silently dropping them changed the boolean logic flow of the authorization engine. As a result, policy evaluation decisions could fail open, allowing unauthorized clients to access protected gRPC services or resources. #### HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Mitigation Bypass / Denial of Service via Stream Aborts - Affected Component: HTTP/2 transport - Impact: Earlier mitigations in grpc-go for HTTP/2 Rapid Reset only applied threshold checks to items that directly resulted in control frames being written back to the wire, such as `SETTINGS` ACKs or server-initiated `RST_STREAM`s. When a client initiated a rapid flood of stream creation (`HEADERS`) immediately followed by stream termination `RST_STREAM`, items queued up in the control buffer without counting against the transport response frame threshold. An attacker can repeatedly trigger this flood sequence to bypass reader blocking, resulting in high CPU usage, and Denial of Service (DoS). #### Denial of Service (Panic) in xDS RBAC Engine via Unsupported Fields inside NOT Rules - Affected Component: xDS RBAC - Impact: The xDS RBAC policy translators recursively generate matchers for nested rules. When a `NOT` rule wrapped an unsupported or unhandled field (such as `SourcedMetadata`), the recursive step returned an empty matcher. This could result in a runtime panic when the RBAC engine attempts to authorize an incoming request. An attacker or misconfigured/malicious xDS management server delivering an LDS/RDS update containing a `NOT` rule around an unhandled field causes the gRPC server process to crash immediately (CWE-248 / Denial of Service). ### Patches _Has the problem been patched? What versions should users upgrade to?_ All three issues have been fixed in `master` and will be released in 1.82.1 shortly. ### Workarounds _Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?_ If upgrading grpc-go immediately is not possible, apply the following workarounds based on your deployment architecture: * For xDS RBAC Vulnerabilities & Panics: Ensure that upstream xDS management servers do not push RBAC policies containing `Metadata`, `RequestedServerName`, or `NOT` rules wrapping unsupported fields (such as `SourcedMetadata`) to grpc-go servers. * For HTTP/2 Rapid Reset DOS: Configure upstream reverse proxies or load balancers (such as Envoy) with strict HTTP/2 `max_concurrent_streams` limits and active rate limiting on `RST_STREAM` frequency per connection. ### Severity | Vulnerability | Qualitative Severity | Approximate CVSS v3.1 Score | Primary Impact | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | **xDS RBAC Authorization Bypass** | **High** | `8.2` | Unauthorized Access / Fail-Open | | **HTTP/2 Rapid Reset DOS Bypass** | **High** | `7.5` | High CPU Consumption / Denial of Service | | **xDS RBAC Engine Server Panic** | **Medium** | `5.9` | Process Crash / Denial of Service |

Source published

21 Jul 2026 22:03:55 UTC

Source modified

10 Sep 2026 03:51:11 UTC

Saved here

24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC

Source terms

GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0

Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON

Source: osv · GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0. The publisher's wording is preserved. ChangeIntel groups the information and labels changes. The JSON record includes additional source fields.

CVSS_V4 · CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Publisher rating · HIGH

Vulnerabilities in the xDS RBAC authorization engine and the HTTP/2 transport server implementation in google.golang.org/grpc

Source published

27 Jul 2026 15:30:50 UTC

Source modified

28 Jul 2026 15:15:01 UTC

Saved here

24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC

Source terms

OSV · upstream source license applies

Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON

Source: osv · OSV · upstream source license applies. The publisher's wording is preserved. ChangeIntel groups the information and labels changes. The JSON record includes additional source fields.