rootpwn

medium · CVSS v3 6.5

CVE-2026-44235

A malformed AMQP frame can trigger an unsigned size_t underflow in rabbitmq-c’s frame parser, leading to an out‑of‑bounds read and a client

Overview

A malformed AMQP frame can trigger an unsigned size_t underflow in rabbitmq-c’s frame parser, leading to an out‑of‑bounds read and a client crash. The vulnerability is exploitable by an on‑path attacker and results in a denial‑of‑service (DoS) for applications using the affected library.

Description

rabbitmq-c is a C-language AMQP client library for RabbitMQ. Prior to 0.16.0, a malicious AMQP server can send an undersized HEADER or METHOD frame during client login and cause unsigned size_t underflow in amqp_handle_input() in librabbitmq/amqp_connection.c. The parser subtracts HEADER_SIZE, fixed per-frame fields, and FOOTER_SIZE from state->target_size without first checking the minimum frame length. The wrapped encoded.len value is passed through amqp_decode_properties() to amqp_decode_table_internal(), where it defeats bounds checks and causes an out-of-bounds read and process crash. An on-path attacker can also trigger the issue when AMQP traffic is not protected by TLS with certificate validation. The demonstrated impact is denial of service, with no reliable memory disclosure or code execution shown. This issue is fixed in version 0.16.0.

Impact

{'affected_entities': 'Applications and services that use the vulnerable rabbitmq-c library to connect to RabbitMQ.', 'confidentiality': 'No impact', 'integrity': 'No impact', 'availability': 'Denial of Service – client crashes when receiving undersized frames.'}

Remediation

['Upgrade to rabbitmq-c 0.16.0 or later, which removes the underflow check.', 'If an upgrade is not immediately possible, enforce TLS with certificate validation on all AMQP traffic to prevent on‑path manipulation of frames.', 'Consider implementing network-level filtering to reject frames that do not conform to the AMQP specification.', 'Verify that client applications are not using legacy or unpatched versions of rabbitmq-c.']

Risk context

The vulnerability has a CVSS v3 score of 6.5 (medium). It can be exploited by an attacker who can observe or modify AMQP traffic, especially when TLS is not used. Prompt patching is recommended to avoid potential DoS incidents.

Affected products

  • rabbitmq-c
  • RabbitMQ C client
  • librabbitmq
  • AMQP client library
  • RabbitMQ
  • AMQP
  • librabbitmq/amqp_connection.c
  • rabbitmq-c 0.15.x and earlier

Scores

Severity
medium
CVSS v2
5.8
CVSS v3
6.5
CVSS v4
EPSS

DoS AMQP rabbitmq-c client TLS frame buffer-underflow network

← All CVEs