h2o vulnerabilities

h2o has HTTP/2 state amplification

h2o is an HTTP server with support for HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. Prior to commit 9265bdd, there is an HTTP/2 state amplification issue that combines HPACK decompression amplification with Slowloris-style stream stalling. Amplified decoded header state can be retained by stalled HTTP/2 streams, and depending on the configuration, additional limits are needed to bound decoded header state and prevent attack. This issue has been fixed by commit 9265bdd.

h2o is vulnerable to musl libc stack overflow

h2o is an HTTP server with support for HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. Prior to commit 6b5370d, h2o is vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack when calling alloca under certain conditions. When serving static files, h2o builds the file path on stack, by calling alloca. The maximum size of the memory allocated using alloca can be as huge as ~600KB, which exceeds the default pthread stack size used by musl libc (128KB). If the amount of memory allocated by alloca exceeds the stack size, the h2o server crashes with a segmentation fault, while it tries to touch the guard page. This issue has been fixed by commit 6b5370d.

h2o is vulnerable to heap overrun

h2o is an HTTP server with support for HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. Prior to commit 8dc37cb, when h2o receives a ClientHello message over TLS or QUIC and it contains a zero-length SNI extension, the h2o server runs over the zero-length hostname while trying to copy the hostname, assuming that it is NULL-terminated. This is a potential denial-of-service attack vector in sense that it might trigger segmentation violation. This issue has been fixed by commit 8dc37cb.

h2o: musl libc stack overflow (QPACK)

h2o is an HTTP server with support for HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. Prior to commit edd7a120bfc4af11ac0cbebce2a43cc1f93f9af1, when h2o processes a QPACK instruction sent from the peer over HTTP/3, lib/http3/qpack.c might allocate an on-stack buffer as large as approximately 800 KB by calling alloca, which exceeds the default pthread stack size used by musl libc and causes the h2o server to crash with a segmentation fault while touching the guard page. This issue is fixed in commit edd7a120bfc4af11ac0cbebce2a43cc1f93f9af1.

CVE-2025-8671

A mismatch caused by client-triggered server-sent stream resets between HTTP/2 specifications and the internal architectures of some HTTP/2 implementations may result in excessive server resource consumption leading to denial-of-service (DoS). By opening streams and then rapidly triggering the server to reset them—using malformed frames or flow control errors—an attacker can exploit incorrect stream accounting. Streams reset by the server are considered closed at the protocol level, even though backend processing continues. This allows a client to cause the server to handle an unbounded number of concurrent streams on a single connection. Th

H2O alllows bypassing address-based access control with 0-RTT

h2o is an HTTP server with support for HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. When an HTTP request using TLS/1.3 early data on top of TCP Fast Open or QUIC 0-RTT packets is received and the IP-address-based access control is used, the access control does not detect and prohibit HTTP requests conveyed by packets with a spoofed source address. This behavior allows attackers on the network to execute HTTP requests from addresses that are otherwise rejected by the address-based access control. The vulnerability has been addressed in commit 15ed15a. Users may disable the use of TCP FastOpen and QUIC to mitigate the issue.

H2O ignores headers configuration directives

h2o is an HTTP server with support for HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. The configuration directives provided by the headers handler allows users to modify the response headers being sent by h2o. The configuration file of h2o has scopes, and the inner scopes (e.g., path level) are expected to inherit the configuration defined in outer scopes (e.g., global level). However, if a header directive is used in the inner scope, all the definition in outer scopes are ignored. This can lead to headers not being modified as expected. Depending on the headers being added or removed unexpectedly, this behavior could lead to unexpected client behavior. This v

h2o vulnerable to TLS session resumption misdirection

h2o is an HTTP server with support for HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. In version 2.3.0-beta2 and prior, when h2o is configured to listen to multiple addresses or ports with each of them using different backend servers managed by multiple entities, a malicious backend entity that also has the opportunity to observe or inject packets exchanged between the client and h2o may misdirect HTTPS requests going to other backends and observe the contents of that HTTPS request being sent. The attack involves a victim client trying to resume a TLS connection and an attacker redirecting the packets to a different address or port than that intended by the c

CVE-2023-44487

The HTTP/2 protocol allows a denial of service (server resource consumption) because request cancellation can reset many streams quickly, as exploited in the wild in August through October 2023.

Some HTTP/2 implementations are vulnerable to a settings flood, potentially leading to a denial of service

Some HTTP/2 implementations are vulnerable to a settings flood, potentially leading to a denial of service. The attacker sends a stream of SETTINGS frames to the peer. Since the RFC requires that the peer reply with one acknowledgement per SETTINGS frame, an empty SETTINGS frame is almost equivalent in behavior to a ping. Depending on how efficiently this data is queued, this can consume excess CPU, memory, or both.

• Update to 2.2.5+dfsg2-3

Some HTTP/2 implementations are vulnerable to ping floods, potentially leading to a denial of service

Some HTTP/2 implementations are vulnerable to ping floods, potentially leading to a denial of service. The attacker sends continual pings to an HTTP/2 peer, causing the peer to build an internal queue of responses. Depending on how efficiently this data is queued, this can consume excess CPU, memory, or both.

• Update to 2.2.5+dfsg2-3

Some HTTP/2 implementations are vulnerable to a reset flood, potentially leading to a denial of service

Some HTTP/2 implementations are vulnerable to a reset flood, potentially leading to a denial of service. The attacker opens a number of streams and sends an invalid request over each stream that should solicit a stream of RST_STREAM frames from the peer. Depending on how the peer queues the RST_STREAM frames, this can consume excess memory, CPU, or both.

• Update to 2.2.5+dfsg2-3

CVE-2018-0608

Buffer overflow in H2O version 2.2.4 and earlier allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (DoS) via unspecified vectors.

• Update to 2.2.5+dfsg1-1

CVE-2017-10908

H2O version 2.2.3 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service in the server via specially crafted HTTP/2 header.

• Update to 2.2.4+dfsg-1

CVE-2017-10872

H2O version 2.2.3 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service in the server via unspecified vectors.

• Update to 2.2.4+dfsg-1

CVE-2017-10869

Buffer overflow in H2O version 2.2.2 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial-of-service in the server via unspecified vectors.

• Update to 2.2.3+dfsg-1

CVE-2017-10868

H2O version 2.2.2 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service in the server via specially crafted HTTP/1 header.

• Update to 2.2.3+dfsg-1