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VulnerabilityPublished Updated

CVE-2026-27571: nats-server · Data Amplification

Affects nats-serverSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.9 Medium : upgrade to 2.12.3 or 2.11.12 when convenient.

Data as of 29 Oct 2026, 19:04 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score
5.9Medium
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.
EPSS
0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 45% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch
Available – fixed in 2.12.3, 2.11.12
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 24 Feb 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq 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 29 Oct 2026.

What to do

Upgrade nats-server to 2.12.3 or 2.11.12; nats-io/nats-server to 2.11.12.

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
nats-ionats-serverAffected
  • >=2.12.0-RC.1 <2.12.3
Fixed in
  • 2.12.3
nats-ionats-serverAffected
  • <2.11.12
Fixed in
  • 2.11.12
GitHubnats-io/nats-serverpkg:github/nats-io/nats-serverOther threatsAffected
  • <2.11.12
Fixed in
  • 2.11.12

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

AI-suggested

Organizations should upgrade affected nats-server deployments to version 2.11.12 or 2.12.3 or later, where the decompression bounds fix is implemented. If immediate upgrade is not possible, mitigate risk by restricting access to the WebSocket port using network-level controls such as firewalls or VPNs to limit exposure to trusted clients only. Disable WebSocket support if it is not required. Implement monitoring and alerting on memory usage and process restarts of nats-server to detect potential exploitation attempts early. Consider deploying rate limiting or Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block suspiciously large or compressed WebSocket messages. Review and harden authentication and network segmentation to reduce attack surface. Regularly audit and update dependencies to incorporate security patches promptly.

Description

NATS-Server is a High-Performance server for NATS.io, a cloud and edge native messaging system. The WebSockets handling of NATS messages handles compressed messages via the WebSockets negotiated compression. Prior to versions 2.11.2 and 2.12.3, the implementation bound the memory size of a NATS message but did not independently bound the memory consumption of the memory stream when constructing a NATS message which might then fail validation for size reasons. An attacker can use a compression bomb to cause excessive memory consumption, often resulting in the operating system terminating the server process. The use of compression is negotiated before authentication, so this does not require valid NATS credentials to exploit. The fix, present in versions 2.11.2 and 2.12.3, was to bounds the decompression to fail once the message was too large, instead of continuing on. The vulnerability only affects deployments which use WebSockets and which expose the network port to untrusted end-points.

References

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