VulnerabilityPublished 13 Aug 2026Updated 27 Oct 2026

CVE-2025-43859: Charmcraft · h11 accepts some malformed Chunked-Encoding bodies

Affects charmcraftSource GCVE Database

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 9.1 Critical : upgrade to 3.5.0 as a priority.

Data as of 27 Oct 2026, 23:13 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

9.1Critical

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Patch: Available – fixed in 3.5.0

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: High
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: High: There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the impacted component. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 13 Aug 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade charmcraft to 3.5.0.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Homebrewcharmcraft`pkg:brew/charmcraft`Other threats	Affected >=3.3.2 <3.5.0	Fixed in 3.5.0

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

Description

### Impact A leniency in h11's parsing of line terminators in chunked-coding message bodies can lead to request smuggling vulnerabilities under certain conditions. ### Details HTTP/1.1 Chunked-Encoding bodies are formatted as a sequence of "chunks", each of which consists of: - chunk length - `\r\n` - `length` bytes of content - `\r\n` In versions of h11 up to 0.14.0, h11 instead parsed them as: - chunk length - `\r\n` - `length` bytes of content - any two bytes i.e. it did not validate that the trailing `\r\n` bytes were correct, and if you put 2 bytes of garbage there it would be accepted, instead of correctly rejecting the body as malformed. By itself this is harmless. However, suppose you have a proxy or reverse-proxy that tries to analyze HTTP requests, and your proxy has a _different_ bug in parsing Chunked-Encoding, acting as if the format is: - chunk length - `\r\n` - `length` bytes of content - more bytes of content, as many as it takes until you find a `\r\n` For example, [pound](https://github.com/graygnuorg/pound/pull/43) had this bug -- it can happen if an implementer uses a generic "read until end of line" helper to consumes the trailing `\r\n`. In this case, h11 and your proxy may both accept the same stream of bytes, but interpret them differently. For example, consider the following HTTP request(s) (assume all line breaks are `\r\n`): ``` GET /one HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost Transfer-Encoding: chunked 5 AAAAAXX2 45 0 GET /two HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost Transfer-Encoding: chunked 0 ``` Here h11 will interpret it as two requests, one with body `AAAAA45` and one with an empty body, while our hypothetical buggy proxy will interpret it as a single request, with body `AAAAXX20\r\n\r\nGET /two ...`. And any time two HTTP processors both accept the same string of bytes but interpret them differently, you have the conditions for a "request smuggling" attack. For example, if `/two` is a dangerous endpoint and the job of the reverse proxy is to stop requests from getting there, then an attacker could use a bytestream like the above to circumvent this protection. Even worse, if our buggy reverse proxy receives two requests from different users: ``` GET /one HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost Transfer-Encoding: chunked 5 AAAAAXX999 0 ``` ``` GET /two HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost Cookie: SESSION_KEY=abcdef... ``` ...it will consider the first request to be complete and valid, and send both on to the h11-based web server over the same socket. The server will then see the two concatenated requests, and interpret them as _one_ request to `/one` whose body includes `/two`'s session key, potentially allowing one user to steal another's credentials. ### Patches Fixed in h11 0.15.0. ### Workarounds Since exploitation requires the combination of buggy h11 with a buggy (reverse) proxy, fixing either component is sufficient to mitigate this issue. ### Credits Reported by Jeppe Bonde Weikop on 2025-01-09.

References

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