CVE-2023-45288VulnerabilityPublished 4 Apr 2024Updated 4 Nov 2025

CVE-2023-45288: Go standard library net/http · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects Go standard library net/httpSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · 91% EPSS · CVSS 7.5 High.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

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

EPSS: 91.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 99% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

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

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: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 4 Apr 2024
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 2026-10-25.

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 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

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Gonet/http`pkg:golang/net/http`Other threats	Affected =0 =1.22.0-0	Fixed in–

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

AI-suggested

European organizations should immediately assess their use of the Go standard library net/http package, particularly for HTTP/2 endpoints, and identify any services running Go versions prior to 1.22.0. The primary mitigation is to upgrade all affected Go runtime environments to version 1.22.0 or later, where the vulnerability is fixed by limiting the processing of excess header frames. Until upgrades can be applied, organizations should consider implementing network-level protections such as rate limiting and anomaly detection on HTTP/2 traffic to detect and block excessive CONTINUATION frames. Web application firewalls (WAFs) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) should be configured to monitor for abnormal header frame patterns. Additionally, monitoring resource utilization on Go-based HTTP/2 servers can help detect early signs of exploitation attempts. Organizations should also review and tighten MaxHeaderBytes settings to reasonable limits and ensure logging is enabled for HTTP/2 connections to facilitate incident response. Finally, security teams should stay informed on any emerging exploits or patches related to this vulnerability.

Description

An attacker may cause an HTTP/2 endpoint to read arbitrary amounts of header data by sending an excessive number of CONTINUATION frames. Maintaining HPACK state requires parsing and processing all HEADERS and CONTINUATION frames on a connection. When a request's headers exceed MaxHeaderBytes, no memory is allocated to store the excess headers, but they are still parsed. This permits an attacker to cause an HTTP/2 endpoint to read arbitrary amounts of header data, all associated with a request which is going to be rejected. These headers can include Huffman-encoded data which is significantly more expensive for the receiver to decode than for an attacker to send. The fix sets a limit on the amount of excess header frames we will process before closing a connection.

Impact

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a significant risk of denial of service attacks against services built using the Go standard library's net/http package with HTTP/2 enabled. Organizations running web servers, APIs, or microservices in Go versions prior to 1.22.0 could experience service outages or degraded performance if targeted by attackers exploiting this vulnerability. This could impact critical infrastructure, financial services, e-commerce platforms, and public sector services that rely on Go-based HTTP/2 servers. The resource exhaustion could lead to increased operational costs, loss of availability, and potential cascading failures in dependent systems. Given the ease of exploitation and lack of required authentication, attackers can launch these attacks remotely, increasing the threat surface. Additionally, the vulnerability could be leveraged as part of larger multi-vector attacks or to distract defenders while other attacks are conducted. The absence of known exploits in the wild suggests that proactive patching can effectively mitigate risk before widespread exploitation occurs.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 4 Nov 2025, 18:54 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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