HAProxy 3 before 3.4.6 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (persistent worker-thread CPU exhaustion) via an HTTP/1.1 chunked request. Although the H1 multiplexer drains the request before closing the stream, the parser repeatedly re-processes the same bytes without making progress. The affected thread stays busy at 100% CPU after timeouts expire and after the client disconnects, and repeated requests can consume all worker threads until the process is restarted.

HAProxy 3.2 before 3.4.6 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (worker-thread CPU exhaustion) via a truncated HTTP/2 PING frame. h2chandleping in src/muxh2.c does not check for a short read, unlike the other H2 frame handlers. Because the incomplete frame cannot be processed, its data is never consumed, and the H2 multiplexer tasklet is repeatedly woken by that pending data without making progress. The CPU spins until timeout http-request closes the connection, and an attacker opening many such connections can sustain high CPU usage.

In HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2.0 through 3.4.3 (and corresponding Enterprise Edition releases), Server.ConfigureAPI() has process-global authentication logic that improperly drops security controls across multiple transport types. When a TLS Certificate Authority (tlsca) is configured and a numeric TLS port (tlsport) is specified, the application globally disables Basic authentication on its shared internal request handler. Because this handler is shared concurrently among HTTP, HTTPS, and UNIX domain socket listeners, and mutual TLS (mTLS) client certificate verification (tls.RequireAndVerifyClientCert) is enforced exclusively on the HTTPS server path, all other simultaneously active non-mTLS listeners fail open. Consequently, an unauthenticated attacker capable of reaching an affected HTTP or UNIX management endpoint can completely bypass credentials to gain full API administrative access. This allows unauthorized remote or local actors to read sensitive, cleartext HAProxy configuration data or replace the managed configuration entirely via the raw configuration endpoint. This has been fixed in versions 3.4.4, 3.3.9, 3.2.17, 3.0.25, 2.9.29, and their respective EE backports by migrating to a per-request TLS connection-state validation model.

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 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.

HAProxy Community Edition 3.0 through 3.3 before 3.3.3 lacks a length check for the NEWTOKEN format. HAProxy Enterprise and ALOHA are also affected.

HAProxy Community Edition 3.2.x through 3.3.x before 3.3.3 can enter a loop or crash because varint is mishandled. HAProxy Enterprise and ALOHA are also affected.

HAProxy Community Edition 3.2.x through 3.3.x before 3.3.3 can enter a loop or crash because varint is mishandled. HAProxy Enterprise and ALOHA are also affected.

HAProxy through 3.4.0, fixed in commit 5985276, contains an integer overflow vulnerability in the fcgiconn structure's drl field that allows buffer misparse as new FCGI record headers. When contentLength is 65535 and paddingLength is 1 or more, the drl field wraps to 0, causing incorrect record consumption and allowing malicious FastCGI backends to desynchronize the FCGI framing parser, potentially causing request routing errors, response smuggling, or memory safety issues.

HAProxy through 3.4.0, fixed in commit 9a6d1fe, contains a null pointer dereference vulnerability in hpackdhtinsert() within src/hpack-tbl.c that fails to validate the return value of hpackdhtdefrag() when the memory pool is exhausted. An attacker can trigger HPACK dynamic table insertions under memory pressure to dereference a NULL pointer and crash HAProxy worker processes, causing denial of service.

HAProxy - NULL Pointer Dereference in hpackdhtinsert Function

HAProxy through 3.4.0, fixed in commit 9a6d1fe, contains a null pointer dereference vulnerability in hpackdhtinsert() within src/hpack-tbl.c that fails to validate the return value of hpackdhtdefrag() when the memory pool is exhausted. An attacker can trigger HPACK dynamic table insertions under memory pressure to dereference a NULL pointer and crash HAProxy worker processes, causing denial of service.

HAProxy - Integer Overflow in FCGI Demux Record Length Field

HAProxy through 3.4.0, fixed in commit 5985276, contains an integer overflow vulnerability in the fcgiconn structure's drl field that allows buffer misparse as new FCGI record headers. When contentLength is 65535 and paddingLength is 1 or more, the drl field wraps to 0, causing incorrect record consumption and allowing malicious FastCGI backends to desynchronize the FCGI framing parser, potentially causing request routing errors, response smuggling, or memory safety issues.

James Kettle’s work on request smuggling has always inspired me. I’ve followed his research, watched his talks at DEFCON and BlackHat, and spent time experimenting with his labs and tooling.

Coming from a web security background, I’ve explored vulnerabilities both from a black-box and white-box perspective — understanding not just how to exploit them, but also the exact lines of code responsible for issues like SQLi, XSS, and broken access control.

Request smuggling, however, always felt different. It remained something I could detect and exploit… but never fully trace down to its root cause in real-world server implementations.

A few months ago, I decided to go deeper into networking and protocol internals, and now, months later, I can say that I “might” have figured out how the internet works😂

This research on HAProxy (HTTP/3) is the result of that journey — finally connecting the dots between protocol behavior and the actual code paths leading to the bug.

(Yes, I used AI 😉 )

u/albinowax ’s work on request smuggling has always inspired me. I’ve followed his research, watched his talks at DEFCON and BlackHat, and spent time experimenting with his labs and tooling.

Coming from a web security background, I’ve explored vulnerabilities both from a black-box and white-box perspective — understanding not just how to exploit them, but also the exact lines of code responsible for issues like SQLi, XSS, and broken access control.

Request smuggling, however, always felt different. It remained something I could detect and exploit… but never fully trace down to its root cause in real-world server implementations.

A few months ago, I decided to go deeper into networking and protocol internals, and now, months later, I can say that I “might” have figured out how the internet works😂 This research on HAProxy (HTTP/3, standalone mode) is the result of that journey — finally connecting the dots between protocol behavior and the actual code paths leading to the bug.

(Yes, I used AI 😉 )

An issue was discovered in HAProxy before 3.3.6. The HTTP/3 parser does not check that the received body length matches a previously announced content-length when the stream is closed via a frame with an empty payload. This can cause desynchronization issues with the backend server and could be used for request smuggling. The earliest affected version is 2.6.

An issue was discovered in HAProxy before 3.3.6. The HTTP/3 parser does not check that the received body length matches a previously announced content-length when the stream is closed via a frame with an empty payload. This can cause desynchronization issues with the backend server and could be used for request smuggling. The earliest affected version is 2.6.

Inefficient algorithm complexity in mjson in HAProxy allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via specially crafted JSON requests.

A flaw was found in haproxy. A stemming from an inefficient algorithmic complexity issue within its bundled mjson parsing library. This vulnerability is triggered when haproxy is configured to analyze JSON content, such as with the jsonquery or jwtpayloadquery function

A flaw was found in haproxy. A stemming from an inefficient algorithmic complexity issue within its bundled mjson parsing library. This vulnerability is triggered when haproxy is configured to analyze JSON content, such as with the jsonquery or jwtpayloadquery function

HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller before 3.1.13, when the config-snippets feature flag is used, accepts config snippets from users with create/update permissions. This can result in obtaining an ingress token secret as a response. The fixed versions of HAProxy Enterprise Kubernetes Ingress Controller are 3.0.16-ee1, 1.11.13-ee1, and 1.9.15-ee1.

QUIC in HAProxy 3.1.x before 3.1-dev7, 3.0.x before 3.0.5, and 2.9.x before 2.9.11 allows opening a 0-RTT session with a spoofed IP address. This can bypass the IP allow/block list functionality.

HAProxy 2.9.x before 2.9.10, 3.0.x before 3.0.4, and 3.1.x through 3.1-dev6 allows a remote denial of service for HTTP/2 zero-copy forwarding (h2send loop) under a certain set of conditions, as exploited in the wild in 2024.

HAProxy 2.9.x before 2.9.10, 3.0.x before 3.0.4, and 3.1.x through 3.1-dev6 allows a remote denial of service for HTTP/2 zero-copy forwarding (h2send loop) under a certain set of conditions, as exploited in the wild in 2024.

HAProxy before 2.8.2 accepts # as part of the URI component, which might allow remote attackers to obtain sensitive information or have unspecified other impact upon misinterpretation of a pathend rule, such as routing index.html#.png to a static server.

HAProxy before 2.8.2 accepts # as part of the URI component, which might allow remote attackers to obtain sensitive information or have unspecified other impact upon misinterpretation of a pathend rule, such as routing index.html#.png to a static server.

On 10/10/23 11:40, Alan Coopersmith wrote: Information I've found so far on open source implementations (most via the current listings in the CVE) include: Some more updates since last week: - Apache httpd:   https://chaos.social/@icing/111210915918780532 The discussion in https://github.com/apache/httpd-site/pull/10 makes the situation a little murkier.

- contour: https://github.com/projectcontour/contour/pull/5850

- grpc-go: https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/pull/6703 - haproxy: https://github.com/haproxy/haproxy/issues/2312 https://www.haproxy.com/blog/haproxy-is-not-affected-by-the-http-2-rapid-reset-attack-cve-2023-44487 - http2 [Haskell]: https://github.com/kazu-yamamoto/http2/issues/93

- IETF: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2023OctDec/0025.html

- kubernetes: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121120

- linkerd: https://linkerd.io/2023/10/12/linkerd-cve-2023-44487/ - netty: https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/58f75f665aa81a8cbcf6ffa74820042a285c5e61 https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-xpw8-rcwv-8f8p https://netty.io/news/2023/10/10/4-1-100-Final.html

- varnish https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache/issues/3996

Also,https://mstdn.social/@jschauma/111252863550361935 points out that the Rust h2 crate seems to have announced a very similar issue under a different CVE id back in April:

https://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2023-0034.html https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-f8vr-r385-rh5r

and a followup post notes further similarities to Netflix's CVE-2019-9514 “Reset Flood” from https://github.com/Netflix/security-bulletins/blob/master/advisories/third-party/2019-002.md except in that case the RSTSTREAM seem to have been sent from the server, not the client side.

-- -Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith () oracle com Oracle Solaris Engineering - https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris

[I've seen multiple news articles & blogs in the wake of the coordinated disclosure today, but no postings here yet, so lets start fixing that.]

Google, Cloudflare, AWS, and others released details today of a protocol-level issue in HTTP/2 being exploited in recent months for denial-of-service attacks:

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/how-it-works-the-novel-http2-rapid-reset-ddos-attack https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-breakdown-http2-rapid-reset-ddos-attack/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-aws-protects-customers-from-ddos-events/

This attack works via the multiplexed streams feature of HTTP/2, in which the client repeatedly makes a request for a new stream, and then immediately sends a RSTSTREAM frame to cancel them, resulting in the server doing lots of extra work to set up and tear down the streams, while not hitting any server-side limit on a maximum number of active streams per connection.

CVE-2023-44487 was issued to track this issue across implementations: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-44487

A script to check for affected implemenations has been posted at: https://github.com/bcdannyboy/CVE-2023-44487

Information I've found so far on open source implementations (most via the current listings in the CVE) include:

- Apache httpd: https://chaos.social/@icing/111210915918780532

- caddy: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/issues/5877

- envoy: https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/pull/30055

- golang: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/63417 https://groups.google.com/g/golang-announce/c/iNNxDTCjZvo

- h2o: https://github.com/h2o/h2o/security/advisories/GHSA-2m7v-gc89-fjqf https://github.com/h2o/h2o/pull/3291

- haproxy: https://github.com/haproxy/haproxy/issues/2312

- hyper: https://seanmonstar.com/post/730794151136935936/hyper-http2-rapid-reset-unaffected

- jetty: https://github.com/eclipse/jetty.project/issues/10679 https://github.com/eclipse/jetty.project/releases/tag/jetty-12.0.2 https://github.com/eclipse/jetty.project/releases/tag/jetty-11.0.17 https://github.com/eclipse/jetty.project/releases/tag/jetty-10.0.17 https://github.com/eclipse/jetty.project/releases/tag/jetty-9.4.53.v20231009

- netty: https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/58f75f665aa81a8cbcf6ffa74820042a285c5e61

- nghttp2: https://github.com/nghttp2/nghttp2/pull/1961 https://github.com/nghttp2/nghttp2/releases/tag/v1.57.0

- nginx: https://www.nginx.com/blog/http-2-rapid-reset-attack-impacting-f5-nginx-products/ https://mailman.nginx.org/pipermail/nginx-devel/2023-October/S36Q5HBXR7CAIMPLLPRSSSYR4PCMWILK.html

- nodejs: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/50121

- proxygen: https://github.com/facebook/proxygen/pull/466

- swift-nio-http2: https://forums.swift.org/t/swift-nio-http2-security-update-cve-2023-44487-http-2-dos/67764

- tomcat: https://tomcat.apache.org/security-11.html#FixedinApacheTomcat11.0.0-M12 https://tomcat.apache.org/security-10.html#FixedinApacheTomcat10.1.14 https://tomcat.apache.org/security-9.html#FixedinApacheTomcat9.0.81 https://tomcat.apache.org/security-8.html#FixedinApacheTomcat8.5.94

-- -Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith () oracle com Oracle Solaris Engineering - https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris

HAProxy through 2.0.32, 2.1.x and 2.2.x through 2.2.30, 2.3.x and 2.4.x through 2.4.23, 2.5.x and 2.6.x before 2.6.15, 2.7.x before 2.7.10, and 2.8.x before 2.8.2 forwards empty Content-Length headers, violating RFC 9110 section 8.6. In uncommon cases, an HTTP/1 server behind HAProxy may interpret the payload as an extra request.

HAProxy through 2.0.32, 2.1.x and 2.2.x through 2.2.30, 2.3.x and 2.4.x through 2.4.23, 2.5.x and 2.6.x before 2.6.15, 2.7.x before 2.7.10, and 2.8.x before 2.8.2 forwards empty Content-Length headers, violating RFC 9110 section 8.6. In uncommon cases, an HTTP/1 server behind HAProxy may interpret the payload as an extra request.