Security Resilience

CVE-2026-90678

Published
13 September 2026
Modified
22 September 2026
CVSS Score v3.1 7.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:L
EPSS Score 0.0077 55th percentile
Risk Priority 55 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2026-90678 is a high-severity Improper Handling of Length Parameter Inconsistency (CWE-130) vulnerability in Haproxy (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked in the top 45% 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

An issue was discovered in HAProxy 3.3.0 through 3.4.4 and in 3.5-dev1 through 3.5-dev5. Exploitation requires an HTTP/3 frontend: HAProxy must be built with QUIC support and configured with a QUIC bind listener, and the affected traffic must reach a…

more

backend over HTTP/1.1 using chunked transfer coding on a reused connection. Under those conditions, when an HTTP/3 request carries no Content-Length header, the HTTP/3 multiplexer credits the length declared in a DATA frame header to the stream endpoint's known-input-payload estimate at the moment the frame header is decoded, before the payload has been received, and that declared length is emitted verbatim as the HTTP/1.1 chunk size. A remote unauthenticated client that declares more payload than it delivers and then ends the stream causes HAProxy to announce a chunk larger than the bytes it writes and to return the connection to the idle pool in a desynchronized state. The result is potential HTTP request smuggling on reused backend connections: an attacker can place a request past a frontend rule such as a path-based http-request deny, so that the smuggled request is never seen by HAProxy's HTTP analysis, and can cause concurrent clients' requests, including their request lines and Authorization headers, to be consumed as the attacker's request body and lost. Exploitation is not deterministic; it depends on a race with backend connection pooling, succeeding in a majority of but not all trials during testing, and can be retried freely. The mechanism was introduced in 3.3-dev10; releases 3.2.x and earlier are unaffected.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

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-2026-5766Shared CWE-130
CVE-2026-54466Shared CWE-130
CVE-2026-87022Shared CWE-130
CVE-2026-25572Shared CWE-130
CVE-2024-20416Shared CWE-130
CVE-2026-48685Shared CWE-130
CVE-2025-48022Shared CWE-130
CVE-2023-5393Shared CWE-130
CVE-2024-38011Shared CWE-130
CVE-2026-40199Shared CWE-130

Affected Assets

Haproxy
—
inferred from references and description; NVD did not file a CPE for this CVE

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

—

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

—

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

—

Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V3.5.5
  • V4.2.1
  • V4.2.2

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation can discover length-parameter inconsistencies through targeted parsing tests.

Input validation enforces correct length-to-data consistency checks on parsed messages before processing.

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
blocks

Secure SDLC practices directly enforce length validation and input sanitization during coding and review.

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 length-inconsistency vulnerabilities before deployment.

prevents

Secure coding standards directly prohibit improper length handling and enforce defensive parsing practices.

References