Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-42946

F5 Nginx Ingress Controller 3.5.0 – 3.7.2

Published
13 May 2026
Modified
18 June 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 8.3
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
EPSS Score 0.0093 58th percentile
Risk Priority 45 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-42946 is a high-severity Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value (CWE-789) vulnerability in F5 Nginx Ingress Controller. Its CVSS base score is 8.3 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked in the top 42% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A vulnerability exists in the ngx_http_scgi_module and ngx_http_uwsgi_module modules that may result in excessive memory allocation or an over-read of data. When scgi_pass or uwsgi_pass is configured, an unauthenticated attacker with man-in-the-middle (MITM) ability to control responses from an upstream…

more

server may be able to read the memory of the NGINX worker process or restart it. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.003 Application Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications.
T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.
T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution Execution
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in client applications to execute code.
T1210 Exploitation of Remote Services Lateral Movement
Adversaries may exploit remote services to gain unauthorized access to internal systems once inside of a network.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-40701Same product: F5 Dos
CVE-2026-42945Same product: F5 Dos
CVE-2026-42934Same product: F5 Dos
CVE-2026-48142Same product: F5 Dos
CVE-2026-40460Same product: F5 Dos
CVE-2026-42530Same product: F5 Nginx Gateway Fabric
CVE-2026-56434Same product: F5 Nginx Gateway Fabric
CVE-2026-42533Same product: F5 Nginx Gateway Fabric
CVE-2026-60005Same product: F5 Nginx Gateway Fabric
CVE-2026-60065Same product: F5 Nginx Gateway Fabric

Affected Assets

f5
dos
4.8.0 · 4.3.0 — 4.7.0
f5
nginx gateway fabric
1.3.0 — 1.6.2 · 2.0.0 — 2.6.0
f5
nginx ingress controller
3.5.0 — 3.7.2 · 4.0.0 — 4.0.1 · 5.0.0 — 5.4.2
f5
nginx instance manager
2.16.0 — 2.22.0
f5
nginx open source
0.8.42 — 0.9.7 · 1.0.0 — 1.30.0
f5
nginx plus
r32 — r36
f5
waf
4.9.0 — 4.16.0 · 5.1.0 — 5.8.0 · 5.9.0 — 5.12.1

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 2 hardening rules · 2 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V1.4.1

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation (including static analysis and fuzzing) directly finds unsafe pointer arithmetic before deployment.

Input validation directly rejects or bounds untrusted size values before any allocation occurs.

Requiring documented development standards and tools can mandate safe pointer usage and compiler/runtime checks that stop the weakness from being introduced.

Security engineering principles can require bounds-checked pointer arithmetic or safe language constructs that structurally avoid out-of-range offsets.

Process isolation confines damage from invalid pointer offsets to a single address space, reducing overall impact.

Resource quotas and priority allocation limit the system-wide impact of an oversized request.

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.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly prevent coding flaws that trust unvalidated size values for allocations.

ID.RA-01 partial match
prevents

SAST/DAST tools used for vulnerability identification can surface this class of coding defect.

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.

finds

Security testing in development can detect and block excessive allocation flaws before deployment.

prevents

Secure development lifecycle includes input validation and size checks that prevent unbounded allocations.

prevents

Application security requirements mandate bounds checking on size parameters to avoid excessive memory allocation.

prevents

Secure architecture principles require resource-limit enforcement that mitigates uncontrolled memory requests.

prevents

Secure coding standards directly prohibit allocating memory from untrusted size values without validation.

none

Capacity management monitors overall resource use but does not prevent individual allocation bugs.

Hardening callouts derived

Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).

Windows 10 (1 rule)
  • V-220726 Data Execution Prevention (DEP) must be configured to at least OptOut. prevents CWE-823

References