CVE-2026-73508Netty: Memory Leak in DNS Record Decoder via Malformed Domain Names
- 5.3MediumCVSS base score
- 0.63%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 49% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.1.136.Final and 4.2.16.Final, io.netty.handler.codec.dns.AbstractDnsRecord, io.netty.handler.codec.dns.DefaultDnsRecordDecoder.decodeRecord(), and io.netty.handler.codec.dns.DnsCodecUtil.decompressDomainName() failed to release retained or newly allocated ByteBuf objects when IDN.toASCII() or encodeDomainName() rejected a malformed domain name, allowing unauthenticated remote DNS packets to leak direct memory incrementally until denial of service. This issue is fixed in versions 4.1.136.Final and 4.2.16.Final.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 1 day later
· 1 day later
Published
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | Medium5.3 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L |
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.63% · top 49% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 5.3.
Affected products
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Mavenio.netty:netty-codec-dnsGHSA-mfg7-5gfp-c4w3 (opens in a new tab)
References
References5
- https://github.com/netty/netty/security/advisories/GHSA-mfg7-5gfp-c4w3 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/5b68c61f37aa4a3045cba624cbea239655c9003b (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/bb2ff68a1fb71cb4b0eb9a9e17b66c52aff680c6 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.1.136.Final (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/netty/netty/releases/tag/netty-4.2.16.Final (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-58086 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-mfg7-5gfp-c4w3 (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-73508)Record last updated .