Security advisory2026-10-15In Eclipse Vert.x versions [4.0.0, 4.5.34] or [5.0.0,5.0.12] or [5.1.0,5.1.9] or [5.2.0, 5.2.0], the PostgreSQL message decoder reads the 4-byte message length field from the PostgreSQL wire protocol without any maximum validation. A malicious, compromised, or man-in-the-middle PostgreSQL server can send a message header with the length field set to an extremely large value (up to Integer.MAXVALUE), causing the decoder to accumulate subsequent TCP data into a composite buffer without bound, leading to unbounded memory allocation on the client and an out-of-memory crash. This occurs before authentication completes. The impacted component is io.vertx projectSecurity advisory

Security issue reported in Software component

In Eclipse Vert.x versions [4.0.0, 4.5.34] or [5.0.0,5.0.12] or [5.1.0,5.1.9] or [5.2.0, 5.2.0], the PostgreSQL message decoder reads the 4-byte message length field from the PostgreSQL wire protocol without any maximum…

What happened

  • In Eclipse Vert.x versions [4.0.0, 4.5.34] or [5.0.0,5.0.12] or [5.1.0,5.1.9] or [5.2.0, 5.2.0], the PostgreSQL message decoder reads the 4-byte message length field from the PostgreSQL wire protocol without any maximum validation. A malicious, compromised, or man-in-the-middle PostgreSQL server can send a message header with the length field set to an extremely large value (up to Integer.MAX_VALUE), causing the decoder to accumulate subsequent TCP data into a composite buffer without bound, leading to unbounded memory allocation on the client and an out-of-memory crash. This occurs before authentication completes. The impacted component is io.vertx:vertx-pg-client.Security Advisory CVE-2026-103223
  • In Eclipse Vert.x versions [4.0.0, 4.5.34] or [5.0.0,5.0.12] or [5.1.0,5.1.9] or [5.2.0, 5.2.0], the PostgreSQL message decoder reads the 4-byte message length field from the PostgreSQL wire protocol without any maximum validation.Advisory description (CVE-2026-103223)

Contributing factors stated by the source

  • In Eclipse Vert.x versions [4.0.0, 4.5.34] or [5.0.0,5.0.12] or [5.1.0,5.1.9] or [5.2.0, 5.2.0], the PostgreSQL message decoder reads the 4-byte message length field from the PostgreSQL wire protocol without any maximum validation.

The failure pattern

Retry amplification and runaway resource consumptionRetries, loops or an expensive input multiply load until a partial failure becomes a full outage or a runaway bill.How to prevent it
Watch the pattern: Retry amplification and runaway resource consumption

Related standards

CollectSEA's mapping through this incident's failure pattern; not an official determination by the standards bodies.

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Incidents with the same pattern

Security advisory2026-10-16

Software component issue could make the service unavailable

pupnp is an SDK for development of UPnP device and control point applications. Prior to 2.0.2, rawtoint in upnp/src/genlib/net/http/httpparser.c parses Content-Length with strtol and casts the resulting long to a 32-bit…

Retry amplification and runaway resource consumptionnvd.nist.gov