CVE-2021-32778

Excessive CPU utilization when closing HTTP/2 streams

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: August 24, 2021 at 08:30 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 03:53 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorEnvoy

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 1%

Description

Envoy is an open source L7 proxy and communication bus designed for large modern service oriented architectures. In affected versions envoy’s procedure for resetting a HTTP/2 stream has O(N^2) complexity, leading to high CPU utilization when a large number of streams are reset. Deployments are susceptible to Denial of Service when Envoy is configured with high limit on H/2 concurrent streams. An attacker wishing to exploit this vulnerability would require a client opening and closing a large number of H/2 streams. Envoy versions 1.19.1, 1.18.4, 1.17.4, 1.16.5 contain fixes to reduce time complexity of resetting HTTP/2 streams. As a workaround users may limit the number of simultaneous HTTP/2 dreams for upstream and downstream peers to a low number, i.e. 100.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 1.16.5v < 1.17.4v < 1.18.4v < 1.19.11.16.0 ≤ v < 1.16.51.17.0 ≤ v < 1.17.41.18.0 ≤ v < 1.18.41.19.0
Affected range stops below 1.16.5, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.17.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.18.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.19.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

CVSS

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-834

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