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Case File

CVE-2016-6581

HIGH · CVSS 7.5 EPSS 1.83%

Source: NVD + CISA KEV + EPSS (historical backfill) · Published 2017-01-10 · Last synced 2026-08-04

CyberRota Analysis

This is a high severity vulnerability with a CVSS score of 7.5. It may lead to a denial-of-service condition.

CVE
CVE-2016-6581
Severity
HIGH
CVSS
7.5
EPSS
1.83%

Original NVD Description

A HTTP/2 implementation built using any version of the Python HPACK library between v1.0.0 and v2.2.0 could be targeted for a denial of service attack, specifically a so-called "HPACK Bomb" attack. This attack occurs when an attacker inserts a header field that is exactly the size of the HPACK dynamic header table into the dynamic header table. The attacker can then send a header block that is simply repeated requests to expand that field in the dynamic table. This can lead to a gigantic compression ratio of 4,096 or better, meaning that 16kB of data can decompress to 64MB of data on the target machine.