Service-discovery outage via malformed registry fields
Published Sep 17, 2026 · Updated Sep 21, 2026
Denial of service in Steeltoe.Discovery.Eureka 4.0.0 through 4.2.0 allows remote attackers to disrupt service discovery via malformed registry fields. JsonInstanceInfoConverter deserializes each registry response as one unit, so invalid enum, Boolean, or timestamp values abort the entire response. A principal able to register or update an instance can leave every connected Steeltoe client with an empty or stale instance list until that registration is removed.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in Steeltoe.Discovery.Eureka 4.0.0 through 4.2.0 allows remote attackers to disrupt service discovery via malformed registry fields. JsonInstanceInfoConverter deserializes each registry response as one unit, so invalid enum, Boolean, or timestamp values abort the entire response. A principal able to register or update an instance can leave every connected Steeltoe client with an empty or stale instance list until that registration is removed.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-81515
- Published
- Sep 17, 2026
- Updated
- Sep 21, 2026
- Vendor
- Steeltoe
- Product
- Security Advisories
- Classifications
- CWE-755, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 17, 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?
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- Affected versionversion=>= 4.0.0, < 4.3.0
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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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
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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