Rustls: Brotli certificate decompression can allocate an attacker-controlled amount of memory up to 1 GiB before authentication.

CISA KEV is observed exploitation evidence. FIRST EPSS is a dated prediction of exploitation in the next 30 days. Missing scores are unknown. This collector requests predictions only for explicit CVE aliases in the public NuGet archive; Microsoft release views retain their existing prediction scope.

No collected risk observation for these identifiers. This does not establish absence of exploitation or a zero probability.

### Summary The built-in (but disabled by default) Brotli certificate decoder bounds the output buffer but accepts an input-selected history window. A header of five bytes can specify a 1 GiB window allocation. A peer can abort a process whose allocator cannot satisfy that request. A client must enable Brotli and connect to the peer; a server must enable Brotli and request a client certificate. Neither direction requires a trusted attacker certificate. ### Details rustls calls `BrotliDecompress` which enables Brotli's large-window extension. rustls applies a limit to certificates, but this applies to the decompressed result, and not to any internal allocations the process requires. ### Impact Client applications that enable the `brotli` feature will be vulnerable to malicious servers. Server applications that enable the `brotli` feature and enable client authentication will be vulnerable to malicious clients. Potential for denial of service due to memory exhaustion from peers sending malicious Brotli-encoded certificates, for applications that enable Brotli decompression. ### Acknowledgement Thanks to OpenAI [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) for the disclosure.

Source published

27 Oct 2026 16:08:36 UTC

Source modified

27 Oct 2026 16:15:05 UTC

Observed here

27 Oct 2026 16:45:46 UTC

Source terms

GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0

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

This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: osv · GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS_V3 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Publisher rating · LOW

The built-in Brotli certificate decompressor (enabled by the non-default `brotli` crate feature) bounded the size of the decompressed output, but accepted a peer-selected history window. Brotli's large-window extension was enabled, so a five-byte header could cause an allocation of 1 GiB. A peer can abort a process whose allocator cannot satisfy that request. No trusted certificate is required by the attacker. Affected configurations are: - clients that enable the `brotli` feature and connect to a malicious server, and - servers that enable the `brotli` feature and request client certificates. Applications that do not enable the `brotli` feature are not affected.

Source published

14 Oct 2026 12:00:00 UTC

Source modified

14 Oct 2026 13:30:02 UTC

Observed here

24 Oct 2026 13:19:54 UTC

Source terms

OSV · upstream source license applies

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

This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: osv · OSV · upstream source license applies. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS_V3 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L