CVE-2023-33953

Denial-of-Service in gRPC

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: August 9, 2023 at 12:54 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 06:02 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorGrpc

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.5%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

gRPC contains a vulnerability that allows hpack table accounting errors could lead to unwanted disconnects between clients and servers in exceptional cases/ Three vectors were found that allow the following DOS attacks: - Unbounded memory buffering in the HPACK parser - Unbounded CPU consumption in the HPACK parser The unbounded CPU consumption is down to a copy that occurred per-input-block in the parser, and because that could be unbounded due to the memory copy bug we end up with an O(n^2) parsing loop, with n selected by the client. The unbounded memory buffering bugs: - The header size limit check was behind the string reading code, so we needed to first buffer up to a 4 gigabyte string before rejecting it as longer than 8 or 16kb. - HPACK varints have an encoding quirk whereby an infinite number of 0’s can be added at the start of an integer. gRPC’s hpack parser needed to read all of them before concluding a parse. - gRPC’s metadata overflow check was performed per frame, so that the following sequence of frames could cause infinite buffering: HEADERS: containing a: 1 CONTINUATION: containing a: 2 CONTINUATION: containing a: 3 etc…

Affected

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

v < 1.53.2v < 1.56.11.54 ≤ v < 154.31.54.0 ≤ v < 1.54.31.55 ≤ v < 1.55.21.55.0 ≤ v < 1.55.21.56 ≤ v < 1.56.21.56.0 ≤ v < 1.56.21.541.551.56
Affected range stops below 1.53.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.54.3, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.55.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.56.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.56.2, 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:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.5HIGHGoogle
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-789CWE-834CWE-770

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