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Buffa: Memory Exhaustion Denial of Service in decode_unknown_field via Unbounded Allocation

Type: advisorySources: OSV

Buffa is a pure-Rust Protocol Buffers implementation with first-class protobuf editions support. Prior to 0.8.0, the decode_unknown_field function in buffa's protobuf decoder allocated heap memory in proportion to untrusted input (unknown fields in the serialized protobuf) without enforcing an allocation budget, affecting any message decoded from untrusted input using code generated with preserve_unknown_fields=true (the default); a small, well-formed payload of nested unknown fields inside a StartGroup could trigger roughly 22x memory amplification (for example a 64 MiB input forcing about 1.4 GB of heap allocation), and length-delimited unknown fields could be sized arbitrarily, so an unauthenticated attacker could crash a process through memory exhaustion because the top-level message size cap did not account for in-decode amplification. This issue is fixed in version 0.8.0.

Products
Not specified
Affected versions
Not specified
Fixed versions
Not specified
CVEs
CVE-2026-55407
Confirmed fixed CVEs
Not specified
Updated in this feed
8 Nov 2026, 00:29 UTC · Revision 1

Source evidence

Buffa: Memory Exhaustion Denial of Service in decode_unknown_field via Unbounded Allocation

core-osv · Original source

Published 16 Jul 2026, 15:57 UTC

Buffa is a pure-Rust Protocol Buffers implementation with first-class protobuf editions support. Prior to 0.8.0, the decode_unknown_field function in buffa's protobuf decoder allocated heap memory in proportion to untrusted input (unknown fields in the serialized protobuf) without enforcing an allocation budget, affecting any message decoded from untrusted input using code generated with preserve_unknown_fields=true (the default); a small, well-formed payload of nested unknown fields inside a StartGroup could trigger roughly 22x memory amplification (for example a 64 MiB input forcing about 1.4 GB of heap allocation), and length-delimited unknown fields could be sized arbitrarily, so an unauthenticated attacker could crash a process through memory exhaustion because the top-level message size cap did not account for in-decode amplification. This issue is fixed in version 0.8.0.

osv:CVE-2026-55407
Complete source record
{
  "id": "fc23ee6500a58317788e6c18b792530c1c9a4edfe3f4417043866b3c5d720ae5",
  "url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-55407",
  "method": "structured",
  "payload": {
    "kind": "advisory",
    "title": "Buffa: Memory Exhaustion Denial of Service in decode_unknown_field via Unbounded Allocation",
    "summary": "Buffa is a pure-Rust Protocol Buffers implementation with first-class protobuf editions support. Prior to 0.8.0, the decode_unknown_field function in buffa's protobuf decoder allocated heap memory in proportion to untrusted input (unknown fields in the serialized protobuf) without enforcing an allocation budget, affecting any message decoded from untrusted input using code generated with preserve_unknown_fields=true (the default); a small, well-formed payload of nested unknown fields inside a StartGroup could trigger roughly 22x memory amplification (for example a 64 MiB input forcing about 1.4 GB of heap allocation), and length-delimited unknown fields could be sized arbitrarily, so an unauthenticated attacker could crash a process through memory exhaustion because the top-level message size cap did not account for in-decode amplification. This issue is fixed in version 0.8.0.",
    "evidence": "osv:CVE-2026-55407",
    "products": [],
    "severity": "medium",
    "structured": {
      "id": "CVE-2026-55407",
      "aliases": [
        "CVE-2026-55407",
        "GHSA-f9qc-qg88-7pq5"
      ],
      "metrics": [
        {
          "type": "CVSS_V4",
          "score": "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N"
        }
      ],
      "affected": [
        {
          "ranges": [
            {
              "repo": "https://github.com/anthropics/buffa",
              "type": "GIT",
              "events": [
                {
                  "introduced": "0"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "3e72fbb1ef8a7b0f84e6ea0409038c7996a92450"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "278fa43fcff661d4ee6bd83b75955a153d4281fc"
                }
              ],
              "database_specific": {
                "extracted_events": [
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "introduced": "0"
                      },
                      {
                        "fixed": "0.8.0"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "AFFECTED_FIELD",
                    "strategy": "StringRangeExpression"
                  },
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "fixed": "278fa43fcff661d4ee6bd83b75955a153d4281fc"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "REFERENCES_COMMIT"
                  },
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "fixed": "3e72fbb1ef8a7b0f84e6ea0409038c7996a92450"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "REFERENCES_TAG",
                    "original_tag": "v0.8.0"
                  }
                ]
              }
            }
          ],
          "versions": [
            "v0.3.0",
            "v0.1.0",
            "v0.2.0",
            "v0.6.0",
            "v0.7.0",
            "v0.5.0",
            "v0.4.0",
            "v0.7.1",
            "v0.5.2",
            "v0.5.1"
          ],
          "database_specific": {
            "source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-55407.json"
          }
        }
      ],
      "modified": "2026-10-28T02:30:52.144890133Z",
      "provider": "osv",
      "references": [
        "https://github.com/anthropics/buffa/releases/tag/v0.8.0",
        "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/55xxx/CVE-2026-55407.json",
        "https://github.com/anthropics/buffa/security/advisories/GHSA-f9qc-qg88-7pq5",
        "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-55407",
        "https://github.com/anthropics/buffa/commit/278fa43fcff661d4ee6bd83b75955a153d4281fc",
        "https://github.com/anthropics/buffa/pull/184"
      ],
      "provider_metadata": {
        "cwe_ids": [
          "CWE-400",
          "CWE-770",
          "CWE-789"
        ],
        "cna_assigner": "GitHub_M",
        "osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/55xxx/CVE-2026-55407.json"
      }
    },
    "related_cves": [
      {
        "value": "CVE-2026-55407",
        "evidence": "/id"
      }
    ],
    "security_relevant": true,
    "severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
  },
  "source_id": "core-osv",
  "document_id": 520972,
  "published_at": "2026-07-16T15:57:31.704+00:00"
}