cow_spdy:inflate/2 in cowlib passes peer-supplied compressed bytes directly to zlib:inflate/2 with no output size bound. The SPDY header compression dictionary (?ZDICT) is public, and zlib compresses long runs of repeated bytes at roughly 1024:1, so a few kilobytes of SPDY frame payload can decompress to gigabytes on the BEAM heap, OOM-killing the node. A single unauthenticated SPDY frame is sufficient to trigger the condition. The parsers for syn_stream, syn_reply, and headers frame types are all affected via cow_spdy:parse_headers/2.
This issue affects cowlib from 0.1.0 before 2.16.1.
No advisories yet.
Solution
Upgrade to cowlib 2.16.1 or later, in which the cow_spdy module has been removed entirely. No patched version of cow_spdy will be provided. Migrate away from SPDY, which has been deprecated since 2015 in favour of HTTP/2.
Workaround
No workaround given by the vendor.
Wed, 13 May 2026 19:15:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via memory exhaustion. cow_spdy:inflate/2 in cowlib passes peer-supplied compressed bytes directly to zlib:inflate/2 with no output size bound. The SPDY header compression dictionary (?ZDICT) is public, and zlib compresses long runs of repeated bytes at roughly 1024:1, so a few kilobytes of SPDY frame payload can decompress to gigabytes on the BEAM heap, OOM-killing the node. A single unauthenticated SPDY frame is sufficient to trigger the condition. The parsers for syn_stream, syn_reply, and headers frame types are all affected via cow_spdy:parse_headers/2. This issue affects cowlib from 0.1.0 before 2.16.1. | |
| Title | Decompression Bomb in cow_spdy:inflate/2 Allows Memory Exhaustion via Crafted SPDY Frame | |
| First Time appeared |
Ninenines
Ninenines cowlib |
|
| Weaknesses | CWE-409 | |
| CPEs | cpe:2.3:a:ninenines:cowlib:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | |
| Vendors & Products |
Ninenines
Ninenines cowlib |
|
| References |
| |
| Metrics |
cvssV4_0
|
Projects
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: EEF
Published:
Updated: 2026-05-13T18:43:11.640Z
Reserved: 2026-05-04T18:23:25.574Z
Link: CVE-2026-43970
No data.
Status : Received
Published: 2026-05-13T19:17:25.440
Modified: 2026-05-13T19:17:25.440
Link: CVE-2026-43970
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
No data.