RabbitMQ: Web-MQTT decompression bomb

Summary

RabbitMQ is a messaging and streaming broker. Prior to versions 3.13.15, 4.0.20, 4.1.11, 4.2.6, and 4.3.0, The cowboy WebSocket options at line 117 set compress => true, enabling RFC 7692 permessage-deflate negotiation. The handler does not set max_frame_size, so cowboy's default of infinity applies. cowlib's cow_ws:parse_payload/9 calls zlib:inflate/2 on the compressed payload with no output-size limit. An attacker can negotiate permessage-deflate during the WebSocket upgrade and send a frame containing a zlib bomb (e.g. 50 KB → 5 GB). Decompression occurs in the connection process before websocket_handle/2 ever sees the MQTT bytes. An unauthenticated attacker can crash a RabbitMQ node running the Web-MQTT plugin by sending a single highly-compressed WebSocket frame (a few KB on the wire) that inflates to gigabytes in memory. The cowboy WebSocket handler decompresses the entire frame before the MQTT CONNECT packet is processed, so no credentials are required. Preconditions include rabbitmq_web_mqtt plugin enabled (not default, but common for browser clients) Network reachability to port 15675/15676 No authentication required. This issue is fixed in versions 3.13.15, 4.0.20, 4.1.11, 4.2.6, and 4.3.0.

Timeline

1. Sep 23, 2026, 8:42 PM UTCCVE published
2. Sep 24, 2026, 1:58 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

3. Sep 24, 2026, 3:04 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• rabbitmq rabbitmq-server

  From 3.13.0 · fixed in 3.13.15; From 4.0.0 · fixed in 4.0.20; From 4.1.0 · fixed in 4.1.11; From 4.2.0 · fixed in 4.2.6

• rabbitmqBitnami

  From 3.13.0 · fixed in 3.13.15; From 4.0.0 · fixed in 4.0.20; From 4.1.0 · fixed in 4.1.11; From 4.2.0 · fixed in 4.2.6

References 3