Out-of-bounds Read in Redis

CVE-2021-32761

Redis is an in-memory database that persists on disk. A vulnerability involving out-of-bounds read and integer overflow to buffer overflow exists starting with version 2.2 and prior to versions 5.0.13, 6.0.15, and 6.2.5. On 32-bit systems, Redis `*BIT*` command are vulnerable to integer overflow that can potentially be exploited to corrupt the heap, leak arbitrary heap contents or trigger remote code execution. The vulnerability involves changing the default `proto-max-bulk-len` configuration parameter to a very large value and constructing specially crafted commands bit commands. This problem only affects Redis on 32-bit platforms, or compiled as a 32-bit binary. Redis versions 5.0.`3m 6.0.15, and 6.2.5 contain patches for this issue. An additional workaround to mitigate the problem without patching the `redis-server` executable is to prevent users from modifying the `proto-max-bulk-len` configuration parameter. This can be done using ACL to restrict unprivileged users from using the CONFIG SET command.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published 2021-07-21 · last modified 2026-06-17.