Varnish Cache
CVE-2021-28543
HIGH
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A10:2025 - Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions
ASVS 5.0
V16 - Security Logging and Error Handling Null pointer safety, defensive checks
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Impact The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Impact | CVSS score of 7.5 (HIGH). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction not required. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | A remote attacker could crash the application by dereferencing a null pointer by sending crafted requests to the affected application. No authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
Varnish varnish-modules before 0.17.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon restart) in some configurations. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Check pointers before dereferencing. Use static analysis tools to detect null pointer paths.
Affects your stack
Find out whether the stacks and servers you run are on an affected version.
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified as NULL Pointer Dereference (CWE-476), which allows attackers to crash the application by dereferencing a null pointer. Varnish varnish-modules before 0.17.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon restart) in some configurations. This does not affect organizations that only install the Varnish Cache product; however, it is common to install both Varnish Cache and varnish-modules. Specifically, an assertion failure or NULL pointer dereference can be triggered in Varnish Cache through the varnish-modules header.append() and header.copy() functions. For some Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) files, this gives remote clients an opportunity to cause a Varnish Cache restart. A restart reduces overall availability and performance due to an increased number of cache misses, and may cause higher load on backend servers. Affected products include: Varnish-Cache Varnish-Modules, Varnish-Cache Varnish-Modules Klarlack, Fedoraproject Fedora. Version information: before 0.17.1.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
Varnish varnish-modules before 0.17.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon restart) in some configurations. This does not affect organizations that only install the Varnish Cache product; however, it is common to install both Varnish Cache and varnish-modules. Specifically, an assertion failure or NULL pointer dereference can be triggered in Varnish Cache through the varnish-modules header.append() and header.copy() functions. For some Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) files, this gives remote clients an opportunity to cause a Varnish Cache restart. A restart reduces overall availability and performance due to an increased number of cache misses, and may cause higher load on backend servers.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
A null pointer dereference occurs when a program attempts to access memory through a pointer that has been set to NULL (address 0x0).
Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
More in Varnish Cache
View allDenial of service against HTTP/2 server implementations allows remote unauthenticated attackers to exhaust server resour
vbf_stp_error in bin/varnishd/cache/cache_fetch.c in Varnish HTTP Cache 4.1.x before 4.1.9 and 5.x before 5.2.1 allows r
Varnish before 3.0.5 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (child-process crash and temporary caching out
Varnish 3.x before 3.0.7, when used in certain stacked installations, allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary HTTP h
An issue was discovered in Varnish HTTP Cache 4.0.1 through 4.0.4, 4.1.0 through 4.1.7, 5.0.0, and 5.1.0 through 5.1.2.
Denial of service via workspace overflow in Varnish Cache 9 before 9.0.1 and Varnish Enterprise before 6.0.16r11 allows
Varnish Cache 9.0.0 crashes (denial of service) when a remote client exploits timing between timeout_linger and timeout_
An HTTP Request Forgery issue was discovered in Varnish Cache 5.x and 6.x before 6.0.11, 7.x before 7.1.2, and 7.2.x bef
An issue was discovered in Varnish Cache 7.x before 7.1.2 and 7.2.x before 7.2.1. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this v
In Varnish Cache 7.0.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2, and 7.1.0, it is possible to cause the Varnish Server to assert and automatically
An issue was discovered in Varnish Cache before 6.0.6 LTS, 6.1.x and 6.2.x before 6.2.3, and 6.3.x before 6.3.2. Rated h
An issue was discovered in Varnish Cache before 6.0.4 LTS, and 6.1.x and 6.2.x before 6.2.1. Rated high severity (CVSS 7
GitHub PoC
Exploit-DB