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Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-43970

high Nessus Plugin ID 314739

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Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

 - Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via memory exhaustion. cow_spdy:inflate/2 in cowlib passes peer- supplied compressed bytes directly to zlib:inflate/2 with no output size bound. The SPDY header compression dictionary (?ZDICT) is public, and zlib compresses long runs of repeated bytes at roughly 1024:1, so a few kilobytes of SPDY frame payload can decompress to gigabytes on the BEAM heap, OOM-killing the node. A single unauthenticated SPDY frame is sufficient to trigger the condition. The parsers for syn_stream, syn_reply, and headers frame types are all affected via cow_spdy:parse_headers/2. This issue affects cowlib from 0.1.0 before 2.16.1. (CVE-2026-43970)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-43970

https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-43970

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 314739

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2026_43970.nasl

Version: 1.4

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 5/14/2026

Updated: 6/24/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.2

Threat Score: 4.6

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:U

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-43970

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:11.0, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:22.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:12.0, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:24.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:13.0, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:25.10, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:26.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:erlang-cowlib, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:erlang-cowlib

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/13/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-43970