Unauthenticated service interruption via quadratic language parsing
Published Sep 21, 2026 · Updated Sep 21, 2026
Resource exhaustion in nginx ignition 2.29.0 through 2.40.0 allows remote attackers to interrupt service via an Accept-Language header. The global gin i18n middleware passes the unfiltered header to ParseAcceptLanguage, whose scanner aliases underscores to hyphens after the parser's hyphen-count guard and performs quadratic-time buffer moves on malformed tags. Any unauthenticated client that can reach the HTTP listener can pin a CPU core for seconds per one-megabyte request, and concurrent requests can saturate all cores.
Summary
What happened
Resource exhaustion in nginx ignition 2.29.0 through 2.40.0 allows remote attackers to interrupt service via an Accept-Language header. The global gin i18n middleware passes the unfiltered header to ParseAcceptLanguage, whose scanner aliases underscores to hyphens after the parser's hyphen-count guard and performs quadratic-time buffer moves on malformed tags. Any unauthenticated client that can reach the HTTP listener can pin a CPU core for seconds per one-megabyte request, and concurrent requests can saturate all cores.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-61629
- Published
- Sep 21, 2026
- Updated
- Sep 21, 2026
- Vendor
- Lucas Dillmann
- Product
- nginx ignition
- Classifications
- T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 21, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Sep 21, 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?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=>= 2.29.0, < 2.40.1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Activity data is delayed. The latest report is Sep 28, 2026.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- Upstream Accept-Language CPU-exhaustion proof of conceptproof of concept · demonstrated
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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