CVE-2026-42581
Netty ≤ 4.1.133
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:NSummary
CVE-2026-42581 is a medium-severity HTTP Request/Response Smuggling (CWE-444) vulnerability in Netty Netty. Its CVSS base score is 5.8 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 47th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SC-7 (Boundary Protection) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-30124
Vulnerability Data
Netty is an asynchronous, event-driven network application framework. Prior to 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final, HttpObjectDecoder strips a conflicting Content-Length header when a request carries both Transfer-Encoding: chunked and Content-Length, but only for HTTP/1.1 messages. The guard is absent for HTTP/1.0. An…
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attacker that sends an HTTP/1.0 request with both headers causes Netty to decode the body as chunked while leaving Content-Length intact in the forwarded HttpMessage. Any downstream proxy or handler that trusts Content-Length over Transfer-Encoding will disagree on message boundaries, enabling request smuggling. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.2.13.Final and 4.1.133.Final.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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V4.1.3V4.2.4V1.5.3V4.1.1
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Boundary protection at external interfaces can enforce consistent HTTP request/response parsing rules between intermediaries and endpoints.
Validating HTTP inputs at the intermediary prevents malformed messages from being interpreted inconsistently downstream.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Configuration management can enforce uniform HTTP parsing rules across intermediaries, directly mitigating inconsistent interpretation.
Network monitoring can detect smuggling attempts via anomalous HTTP traffic or logs, while eliminating the inconsistency directly aids detection of such events.
Network protections can enforce consistent HTTP proxy/firewall behavior to block smuggling, and removing the weakness helps prevent unauthorized access via request smuggling.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect HTTP request smuggling vulnerabilities in intermediary components.
Network security controls can enforce consistent HTTP parsing and proxy behavior that mitigates request smuggling.
Secure network services include hardening proxies and gateways against inconsistent HTTP interpretation.
Secure SDLC practices require threat modeling and testing for HTTP parsing inconsistencies in intermediaries.
Application security requirements can mandate strict HTTP message validation and canonicalization.
Secure architecture principles include consistent protocol handling and defense-in-depth for proxies.