Resource exhaustion in Http4s Blaze

CVE-2026-73493

Http4s (http4s-blaze-server) is a minimal, idiomatic Scala interface for HTTP services. Prior to 0.23.18 and 1.0.0-M42, http4s-blaze-server aggregates fragments of an incoming WebSocket message with no limit on total size or fragment count. A client that completes a WebSocket handshake can send an unterminated fragmented message and drive unbounded heap growth in the server JVM, resulting in denial of service through OutOfMemoryError. Any http4s application serving WebSocket routes over BlazeServerBuilder is affected, no non-default configuration is required, and maxWebSocketBufferSize does not bound the aggregate because it bounds only individual frames. A single connection sending continuation frames that never set FIN forces the server to buffer every fragment until the heap is exhausted, terminating the JVM with OutOfMemoryError on the blaze selector thread. Small fragments amplify the cost through per-frame object overhead, so a modest volume of wire bytes is sufficient. This issue is fixed in versions 0.23.18 and 1.0.0-M42.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.006 (48.1th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 48th percentile — 48.1% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-73493: held from 0.003 to 0.006.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.003 · newest: 0.006 · change: +0.003

Affected products

  • Http4s Blaze — versions < 0.23.18, >= 1.0.0-M1, < 1.0.0-M42

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-73493?
CVE-2026-73493 is a high-severity vulnerability in Http4s Blaze, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-08-12.
How severe is CVE-2026-73493?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.