CVE-2026-8466

Unbounded buffer accumulation in multipart header parsing causes denial of service in cowboy

Published May 13, 2026 CVSS 4.0 · 8.2 High EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in ninenines cowboy allows denial of service via unbounded buffer accumulation in multipart header parsing.

cowboy_req:read_part/3 in src/cowboy_req.erl accumulates incoming request bytes into a Buffer binary with no upper-bound check. When cow_multipart:parse_headers/2 returns more or {more, Buffer2}, the function reads up to Length bytes (default 64 KB) from the request body and recurses with the enlarged buffer. There is no equivalent of the byte_size(Acc) > Length guard present in the sibling function read_part_body/4. An unauthenticated attacker can send a multipart/form-data request whose body never yields a complete header section — for example, a body that never contains the advertised boundary delimiter, or one whose header lines never contain \r\n\r\n — and force the server process to accumulate memory linearly with the bytes the protocol layer is willing to deliver. A handful of concurrent such uploads is sufficient to exhaust BEAM memory.

This issue affects cowboy from 2.0.0 before 2.15.0.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-jfc2-q6qh-g5x8 Cowboy: Unbounded buffer accumulation in multipart header parsing causes denial of service in cowboy
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in ninenines cowboy allows denial of service via unbounded buffer accumulation in multipart header parsing. cowboy_req:read_part/3 in src/cowboy_req.erl accumulates incoming request bytes into a Buffer binary with no upper-bound check. When cow_multipart:parse_headers/2 returns more or {more, Buffer2}, the function reads up to Length bytes (default 64 KB) from the request body and recurses with the enlarged buffer. There is no equivalent of the byte_size(Acc) > Length guard present in the sibling function read_part_body/4. An unauthenticated attacker can send a multipart/form-data request whose body never yields a complete header section — for example, a body that never contains the advertised boundary delimiter, or one whose header lines never contain \r\n\r\n — and force the server process to accumulate memory linearly with the bytes the protocol layer is willing to deliver. A handful of concurrent such uploads is sufficient to exhaust BEAM memory. This issue affects cowboy from 2.0.0 before 2.15.0.
Title Unbounded buffer accumulation in multipart header parsing causes denial of service in cowboy
First Time appeared Ninenines
Ninenines cowboy
Weaknesses CWE-770
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:ninenines:cowboy:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Ninenines
Ninenines cowboy
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 8.2, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
EEF
Published
Updated
May 14, 2026, 4:30 AM
Reserved
May 13, 2026, 11:44 AM
Status
Deferred
Published
May 13, 2026, 7:17 PM
Modified
Oct 26, 2026, 2:10 PM