CVE-2026-15712
Description
A heap buffer over-read vulnerability was discovered in libsoup's (versions: libsoup 3.0 to 3.7.0) HTTP/2 connection tracking framework. When the library processes an HTTP/2 GOAWAY frame, it improperly handles the "Additional Debug Data" payload by assuming the data stream is a safely NUL-terminated C-string. Because the parser lacks strict length-boundary verification before reading this data, a remote, unauthenticated attacker can intentionally send a malformed GOAWAY frame missing the appropriate null delimiter. This causes the library to read past the end of the allocated buffer, triggering an application crash that results in a denial of service (DoS), or potentially exposing fragments of memory contents.
Statement
This vulnerability poses a moderate impact to system confidentiality and availability for software implementations leveraging libsoup for HTTP/2 client or server communications. An unauthenticated network adversary can manipulate frame characteristics to force memory parsing out-of-bounds without requiring special system privileges or user interaction. While primarily resulting in a denial of service via a segmentation fault, the risk of data exposure from adjacent heap allocations places this as a notable security boundary failure within the protocol decoding stack.
Mitigation
The vulnerability requires debug logging to be enabled with the G_MESSAGES_DEBUG environment variable, e.g. G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all or G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=libsoup-http2. Ensure this environment variable is not set.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 5.9 | N/A | 5.9 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | High | N/A | High |
| Privileges Required | None | N/A | None |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | None | N/A | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | N/A | None |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Memory
An attacker could get secret values such as cryptographic keys, PII, memory addresses, or other information that could be used in additional attacks.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism
Out-of-bounds memory could contain memory addresses or other information that can be used to bypass ASLR and other protection mechanisms in order to improve the reliability of exploiting a separate weakness for code execution.
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
An attacker could cause a segmentation fault or crash by causing memory to be read outside of the bounds of the buffer. This is especially likely when the code reads a variable amount of data and assumes that a sentinel exists to stop the read operation, such as a NUL in a string.
Other
Technical Impact: Varies by Context
The read operation could produce other undefined or unexpected results.
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank cavid for reporting this issue.
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