Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Network-reachable, zero-authentication, low-complexity DoS with no confidentiality or integrity impact; scope unchanged as OOM is confined to the vulnerable JVM process.
Primary rating from Vendor (redhat).
CVSS VectorVendor: redhat
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.org
A flaw was found in Undertow. A remote attacker can cause Out of Memory on websockets endpoint without authentication on any @ServerEndpoint class that has any @OnMessage method. This allows an attacker to cause Denial of Service attack without authentication and using only a standard WebSocket handshake.
AnalysisAI
Unauthenticated remote memory exhaustion in Undertow's WebSocket subsystem enables denial of service against any deployed application exposing a Jakarta @ServerEndpoint with an @OnMessage handler. An attacker needs only a standard WebSocket handshake - no credentials, no special tooling - to trigger unbounded Out of Memory conditions on the server. No public exploit code has been identified at time of analysis and the vulnerability is not listed in CISA KEV, but the zero-prerequisite attack vector (CVSS AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N) makes exploitation trivially automatable against any reachable Undertow instance.
Technical ContextAI
Undertow is Red Hat's high-performance Java NIO-based HTTP server, serving as the default embedded web server for WildFly, JBoss EAP, and Quarkus. It implements the Jakarta WebSocket specification (JSR-356), including server-side endpoint lifecycle management. The vulnerability resides in the WebSocket message handling path: when a remote client connects to any endpoint class annotated with @ServerEndpoint that declares an @OnMessage method, Undertow fails to bound or throttle memory allocated during message processing. The assigned CWE-120 ('Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input') indicates the root cause is an unchecked size constraint on inbound WebSocket message data, which translates at runtime into unbounded heap allocation and eventual JVM Out of Memory error. The mismatch between CWE-120 (classic buffer overflow) and the OOM description suggests the flaw is in buffer sizing logic rather than a classic native stack overflow - the WebSocket frame or message buffer grows without an enforced ceiling, exhausting the JVM heap.
Affected ProductsAI
The vulnerability affects Red Hat Undertow across versions that implement Jakarta WebSocket @ServerEndpoint/@OnMessage support. The Red Hat security advisory is available at https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-15565 and the associated bug report at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2490628. No specific affected version range or CPE string was included in the provided intelligence data; exact version bounds should be confirmed against the Red Hat advisory. Downstream products embedding Undertow - including WildFly, JBoss EAP, and Quarkus - are potentially affected when they expose WebSocket endpoints.
RemediationAI
The primary remediation is to apply the patch released by Red Hat for Undertow; the exact fixed version should be obtained directly from https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-15565, as no specific patched version number was included in the provided intelligence data. Until a patch is applied, operators can reduce exposure by restricting WebSocket upgrade requests at the reverse proxy or load balancer layer - for example, blocking or rate-limiting HTTP Upgrade headers destined for sensitive endpoints via nginx 'limit_req' or HAProxy ACLs. A trade-off is that legitimate WebSocket clients will be affected. Alternatively, if the application does not require WebSocket functionality, disabling @ServerEndpoint-annotated classes or removing WebSocket deployment descriptors eliminates the attack surface entirely. Deploying connection-count or message-rate limits at the Undertow listener level (via the 'connections-per-address' or analogous configuration) can also throttle the resource exhaustion path, though this does not fix the underlying unbounded allocation. Monitor JVM heap metrics for anomalous growth as a detection signal.
Same weakness CWE-120 – Classic Buffer Overflow
View allSame technique Buffer Overflow
View allVendor StatusVendor
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today
EUVD-2026-55988
GHSA-356w-cx4r-75hv