Hackney has unbounded buffer accumulation in WebSocket

Overview

Summary

The WebSocket client in src/hackney_ws.erl imposes no upper bound on memory consumption across three distinct code paths. In each case, an attacker-controlled WebSocket server can exhaust the connecting process's memory without any authentication or special client configuration.

Details

1. Handshake response buffer (read_handshake_response/3)

The function accumulates received bytes into a growing buffer waiting for \r\n\r\n. The per-receive timeout resets on every chunk, so a server that trickles bytes indefinitely without completing the HTTP upgrade response grows the buffer until OOM. No total-size cap exists.

2. Frame payload accumulation (parse_payload/9, parse_active_payload/8)

parse_payload/9 (lines 816–817 and 825–826) appends each received chunk into a Buffer binary via <<Buffer/binary, MoreData/binary>> whenever the frame parser returns {more, ...}. parse_active_payload/8 does the same in active mode by appending each incoming tcp/ssl message to #ws_data.buffer. RFC 6455 permits payload lengths up to 2⁶³-1 bytes, and neither path validates the declared Len against any limit. The recv_timeout applies per chunk, not to the whole frame, so a slow trickle never triggers it.

3. Fragmentation buffer (frag_buffer)

The frag_buffer field of #ws_data{} accumulates continuation frames. A server that sends an unbounded stream of non-final (nofin) fragments without ever sending a final (fin) frame grows frag_buffer without bound.

PoC

1. Stand up a WebSocket server and connect to it with hackney's WebSocket client.
2. Trigger any of the three paths: (a) never send \r\n\r\n during the handshake; (b) announce a very large frame payload and dribble bytes slowly; (c) send an endless stream of nofin continuation frames.
3. Observe the hackney process's memory growing until the BEAM OOM-kills it or the node crashes.

Impact

Denial of service via unbounded memory consumption. Affects hackney 2.0.0 through 4.0.0 for any application using the WebSocket client against an attacker-controlled server. No authentication or special configuration is required on the client side. CVSS v4.0: 8.7 (HIGH).

Resources

• Introduction commit: https://github.com/benoitc/hackney/commit/690cecaf236fba49526da404a5bc889a24367a3e
• Patch commit: https://github.com/benoitc/hackney/commit/ce0109e2970ace6e20ff29bae9d05c3ac22ec6dc

Affected packages

• hackney >= 2.0.0, < 4.0.1

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• hackney 4.0.1