SETTINGS and stream-0 WINDOW_UPDATE frames trigger quadratic work over blocked streams in Bandit
What fixes it
A fixed version on one release line is not the upgrade target for every line. Check your exact version and any vendor backports.
Description
Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in the HTTP/2 implementation of mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server CPU via small SETTINGS or connection-level WINDOW_UPDATE frames. The attacker opens thousands of streams whose responses block on the connection send window, then sends cheap frames that each make the server walk the whole queue of blocked sends. In the reporter's run, with 3,000 blocked streams a single 9-byte SETTINGS frame took 133 ms to process.
do_pending_sends/2 in lib/bandit/http2/connection.ex retries every queued send and, before each retry, removes that entry from the queue with List.delete/2, so one frame costs O(n²) list operations for n blocked streams. max_concurrent_streams defaults to :infinity, so the attacker chooses n.
This issue affects bandit: from 0.3.4 before 1.14.0.
Text from CVE List
Affected versions 2
- banditaffected: 0.3.4 before 1.14.0CVE List
- banditaffected: 6feadb31189d18b7dcda6c663112cd3bbaf63a46 before 220b9dfd27f9a21305be2afc75cbe585ddc24e7aCVE List
References 5
- github.com/mtrudel/bandit/commit/6feadb31189d18b7dcda6c663112cd3bbaf63a46Fixvia CVE List
- github.com/mtrudel/bandit/commit/220b9dfd27f9a21305be2afc75cbe585ddc24e7aFixvia CVE List
- github.com/mtrudel/bandit/security/advisories/GHSA-j363-h72p-296mAdvisoryvia CVE List
- cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-108529.htmlReferencevia CVE List
- osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-108529Referencevia CVE List