Netty HTTP/2 CONTINUATION Frame Flood DoS via Zero-Byte Frame Bypass

Summary

A remote user can trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) against a Netty HTTP/2 server by sending a flood of CONTINUATION frames. The server's lack of a limit on the number of CONTINUATION frames, combined with a bypass of existing size-based mitigations using zero-byte frames, allows an user to cause excessive CPU consumption with minimal bandwidth, rendering the server unresponsive.

Details

The vulnerability exists in Netty's DefaultHttp2FrameReader. When an HTTP/2 HEADERS frame is received without the END_HEADERS flag, the server expects one or more subsequent CONTINUATION frames. However, the implementation does not enforce a limit on the count of these CONTINUATION frames.

The key issue is located in codec-http2/src/main/java/io/netty/handler/codec/http2/DefaultHttp2FrameReader.java. The verifyContinuationFrame() method checks for stream association but fails to implement a frame count limit.

Any user can exploit this by sending a stream of CONTINUATION frames with a zero-byte payload. While Netty has a maxHeaderListSize protection to limit the total size of headers, this check is never triggered by zero-byte frames. The logic effectively evaluates to maxHeaderListSize - 0 < currentSize, which will not trigger the limit until a non-zero byte is added. As a result, the server is forced to process an unlimited number of frames, consuming a CPU thread and monopolizing the connection.

codec-http2/src/main/java/io/netty/handler/codec/http2/DefaultHttp2FrameReader.java

verifyContinuationFrame() (lines 381-393) — No frame count check:

private void verifyContinuationFrame() throws Http2Exception {
    verifyAssociatedWithAStream();
    if (headersContinuation == null) {
        throw connectionError(PROTOCOL_ERROR, "...");
    }
    if (streamId != headersContinuation.getStreamId()) {
        throw connectionError(PROTOCOL_ERROR, "...");
    }
    // NO frame count limit!
}

HeadersBlockBuilder.addFragment() (lines 695-723) — Byte limit bypassed by 0-byte frames:

// Line 710-711: This check NEVER fires when len=0
if (headersDecoder.configuration().maxHeaderListSizeGoAway() - len <
        headerBlock.readableBytes()) {
    headerSizeExceeded();  // 10240 - 0 < 1 => FALSE always
}

When len=0: maxGoAway - 0 < readableBytes → → FALSE. The byte limit is never triggered.