Unauthenticated service interruption via shared Lua state race
Published May 26, 2026 · Updated May 26, 2026
Race condition in Algernon before 1.17.6 allows remote attackers to interrupt service through concurrent requests to Lua handlers. The handle path in engine/luahandler.go releases the sync.RWMutex before L.Push() and L.PCall(), allowing requests to race on a shared, non-goroutine-safe LState. The server must be using Lua, and modest unauthenticated request concurrency is sufficient to corrupt the Lua VM and cause denial of service.
Summary
What happened
Race condition in Algernon before 1.17.6 allows remote attackers to interrupt service through concurrent requests to Lua handlers. The handle path in engine/luahandler.go releases the sync.RWMutex before L.Push() and L.PCall(), allowing requests to race on a shared, non-goroutine-safe LState. The server must be using Lua, and modest unauthenticated request concurrency is sufficient to corrupt the Lua VM and cause denial of service.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-43981
- Published
- May 26, 2026
- Updated
- May 26, 2026
- Vendor
- xyproto
- Product
- Algernon
- Classifications
- CWE-362, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- May 26, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 26, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
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- Affected versionversion=< 1.17.6
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
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Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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