CVE-2021-43848 HIGH

CVE-2021-43848: Unititialized memory access in h2o

Vendor H2O
Product h2o
Weakness CWE-908
Published February 1, 2022
Last update April 23, 2025

CVSS base score

7.4/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity High
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality High
Integrity None

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

h2o is an open source http server. In code prior to the `8c0eca3` commit h2o may attempt to access uninitialized memory. When receiving QUIC frames in certain order, HTTP/3 server-side implementation of h2o can be misguided to treat uninitialized memory as HTTP/3 frames that have been received. When h2o is used as a reverse proxy, an attacker can abuse this vulnerability to send internal state of h2o to backend servers controlled by the attacker or third party. Also, if there is an HTTP endpoint that reflects the traffic sent from the client, an attacker can use that reflector to obtain internal state of h2o. This internal state includes traffic of other connections in unencrypted form and TLS session tickets. This vulnerability exists in h2o server with HTTP/3 support, between commit 93af138 and d1f0f65. None of the released versions of h2o are affected by this vulnerability. There are no known workarounds. Users of unreleased versions of h2o using HTTP/3 are advised to upgrade immediately.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

February 1, 2022 CVE published
April 23, 2025 Record updated