HTTP/2 Rapid reset attack The HTTP/2 protocol allows clients to indicate to the server that a previous stream should be canceled by sending a RSTSTREAM frame. The protocol does not require the client and server to coordinate the cancellation in any way, the client may do it unilaterally. The client may also assume that the cancellation will take effect immediately when the server receives the RSTSTREAM frame, before any other data from that TCP connection is processed.

Abuse of this feature is called a Rapid Reset attack because it relies on the ability for an endpoint to send a RSTSTREAM frame immediately after sending a request frame, which makes the other endpoint start working and then rapidly resets the request. The request is canceled, but leaves the HTTP/2 connection open.

The HTTP/2 Rapid Reset attack built on this capability is simple: The client opens a large number of streams at once as in the standard HTTP/2 attack, but rather than waiting for a response to each request stream from the server or proxy, the client cancels each request immediately.

The ability to reset streams immediately allows each connection to have an indefinite number of requests in flight. By explicitly canceling the requests, the attacker never exceeds the limit on the number of concurrent open streams. The number of in-flight requests is no longer dependent on the round-trip time (RTT), but only on the available network bandwidth.

In a typical HTTP/2 server implementation, the server will still have to do significant amounts of work for canceled requests, such as allocating new stream data structures, parsing the query and doing header decompression, and mapping the URL to a resource. For reverse proxy implementations, the request may be proxied to the backend server before the RSTSTREAM frame is processed. The client on the other hand paid almost no costs for sending the requests. This creates an exploitable cost asymmetry between the server and the client.

Multiple software artifacts implementing HTTP/2 are affected. This advisory was originally ingested from the swift-nio-http2 repo advisory and their original conent follows.

swift-nio-http2 specific advisory swift-nio-http2 is vulnerable to a denial-of-service vulnerability in which a malicious client can create and then reset a large number of HTTP/2 streams in a short period of time. This causes swift-nio-http2 to commit to a large amount of expensive work which it then throws away, including creating entirely new Channels to serve the traffic. This can easily overwhelm an EventLoop and prevent it from making forward progress.

swift-nio-http2 1.28 contains a remediation for this issue that applies reset counter using a sliding window. This constrains the number of stream resets that may occur in a given window of time. Clients violating this limit will have their connections torn down. This allows clients to continue to cancel streams for legitimate reasons, while constraining malicious actors.

Last updated 14 October 2024

When NGINX Plus or NGINX OSS are configured to use the HTTP/3 QUIC module, undisclosed HTTP/3 requests can cause NGINX worker processes to terminate.

When NGINX Plus or NGINX OSS are configured to use the HTTP/3 QUIC module, undisclosed HTTP/3 encoder instructions can cause NGINX worker processes to terminate or cause or other potential impact.

When NGINX Plus or NGINX OSS are configured to use the HTTP/3 QUIC module and the network infrastructure supports a Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) of 4096 or greater without fragmentation, undisclosed QUIC packets can cause NGINX worker processes to leak previously freed memory.

When NGINX Plus or NGINX OSS are configured to use the HTTP/3 QUIC module, undisclosed HTTP/3 requests can cause NGINX worker processes to terminate or cause other potential impact. This attack requires that a request be specifically timed during the connection draining process, which the attacker has no visibility and limited influence over.

When NGINX Plus or NGINX OSS are configured to use the HTTP/3 QUIC module, undisclosed requests can cause NGINX worker processes to terminate.

When NGINX Plus or NGINX OSS are configured to use the HTTP/3 QUIC module, undisclosed requests can cause NGINX worker processes to terminate.

A vulnerability exists in NGINX Plus and NGINX Open Source when a map directive uses regex matching and the root directive or access log format references the map's regex capture variables before referencing the map output variable. Alternatively, the same result could be achieved by using a non-cacheable variable in a string expression under certain conditions. An unauthenticated attacker along with conditions beyond their control can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests. This may cause a heap buffer overflow in the NGINX worker process leading to a restart. Additionally, attackers can execute code on systems with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) disabled or when the attacker can bypass ASLR. Impact: This vulnerability may allow remote attackers to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) on the NGINX system or to possibly trigger a code execution. There is no control plane exposure; this is a data plane issue only. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.

Description When NGINX Plus or NGINX Open Source is configured with sslsessioncache

Description NGINX Plus and NGINX Open Source have a vulnerability in the ngxhttpv3module module. When using HTTP/3 with proxyrequestbuffering on directive, an unauthenticated attacker may be able to inject data in the proxied request. Impact This vulnerability may allow remote attackers to inject data in the proxied request.  There is no control plane exposure; this is a data plane issue only. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.

A vulnerability exists in NGINX Plus and NGINX Open Source when a location is configured that uses the alias directive together with rewrite and a set or return directive referencing the $requestfilename variable. Alternatively, the same result could be achieved when the $requestfilename variable is used in an access log format directive. An unauthenticated attacker along with conditions beyond their control can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests. This may cause a heap buffer overflow in the NGINX worker process leading to a restart. Additionally, attackers can execute code on systems with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) disabled or when the attacker can bypass ASLR. Impact: This vulnerability may allow remote attackers to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) on the NGINX system or to possibly trigger a code execution. There is no control plane exposure; this is a data plane issue only. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.

NGINX ngxhttpcoremodule vulnerability

A vulnerability exists in NGINX Plus and NGINX Open Source when a map directive uses regex matching and the root directive or access log format references the map's regex capture variables before referencing the map output variable. Alternatively, the same result could be achieved by using a non-cacheable variable in a string expression under certain conditions. An unauthenticated attacker along with conditions beyond their control can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests. This may cause a heap buffer overflow in the NGINX worker process leading to a restart. Additionally, attackers can execute code on systems with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) disabled or when the attacker can bypass ASLR.

When NGINX Plus or NGINX Open Source is configured with sslsessioncache shared:<name>:<size> without an explicit sslsessionticketkey file directive to automatically rotate SSL session ticket keys, a remote unauthenticated attacker is able to forge client SSL sessions in a non-deterministic manner that is beyond the attacker's control. An attacker could leverage this vulnerability to bypass verification of client certificates.

When NGINX Plus is configured to use the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) filter module (ngxstreammqttfiltermodule), unauthenticated attackers can send requests with conditions beyond the attacker's control to cause a heap buffer over-read in the NGINX worker process, leading to a restart.

NGINX Plus and NGINX Open Source have a vulnerability in the ngxhttpcoremodule module. When asynchronous file I/O (AIO) is enabled in certain configurations, processing a Server Side Includes (SSI) page containing include virtual commands may trigger a Use-After-Free (UAF) in the NGINX worker process. This may cause memory corruption or cause a worker process to terminate unexpectedly. Additionally, attackers can execute code on systems with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) disabled or when the attacker can bypass ASLR.

NGINX Plus and NGINX Open Source have a vulnerability in the ngxhttpv3module module. When using HTTP/3 with proxyrequestbuffering on directive, an unauthenticated attacker may be able to inject data in the proxied request.

A vulnerability exists in NGINX Plus and NGINX Open Source when a location is configured that uses the alias directive together with rewrite and a set or return directive referencing the $requestfilename variable. Alternatively, the same result could be achieved when the $requestfilename variable is used in an access logformat directive. An unauthenticated attacker along with conditions beyond their control can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests. This may cause a heap buffer overflow in the NGINX worker process leading to a restart. Additionally, attackers can execute code on systems with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) disabled or when the attacker can bypass ASLR.

Last updated 24 February 2025

NGINX ngxhttpproxyv2module and ngxhttpgrpcmodule vulnerability

Last updated 6 June 2026

Last updated 20 July 2026

Last updated 20 July 2026

NGINX Plus and NGINX Open Source have a vulnerability in the ngxhttpssimodule module. This vulnerability may exist when the Server-Side Includes (SSI), proxypass, and proxybuffering off directives are configured. With this configuration, an unauthenticated attacker with man-in-the-middle (MITM) ability to control responses from an upstream server may be able to cause a heap buffer over-read in the NGINX worker process. This issue may lead to limited modification of memory or a restart of the NGINX worker process.

Impact: This vulnerability may allow remote attackers to have limited control to modify memory contents or restart the NGINX worker process. There is no control plane exposure; this is a data plane issue only.

Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.

Last updated 6 June 2026

Last updated 6 June 2026

Last updated 6 June 2026

Last updated 6 June 2026

NGINX ngxhttpcharsetmodule vulnerability