CVE-2026-43970
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via memory exhaustion.
Overview
CVE-2026-43970 is a known-severity vulnerability. It was published on May 13, 2026.
Technical 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.
Remediation
Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.
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Frequently asked questions
What is CVE-2026-43970?
CVE-2026-43970 is a known-severity vulnerability. It was published on May 13, 2026.
How severe is CVE-2026-43970?
CVSS score information is not yet available for this vulnerability. Check back as the CVE record is updated by NVD analysts.
How do I fix or remediate CVE-2026-43970?
Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.
How can CyberStrike help with CVE-2026-43970?
CyberStrike is an open-source, AI-augmented pentesting engine. Rather than flag a version number, it tests whether an issue like CVE-2026-43970 is actually reachable in your own applications and APIs, then verifies each finding before reporting it. That tells you if the weakness is a real, exploitable risk in your environment or a false positive you can safely deprioritize.