Executive Summary

The vulnerability in CVE-2026-48480 affects the netty-incubator-codec-ohttp library versions prior to 0.0.22.Final. It involves the OHttpVersionChunkDraft implementation of the draft-ietf-ohai-chunked-ohttp protocol, which fails to verify that a cryptographically-signed final chunk is received before the outer HTTP body terminates.

This flaw allows an on-path adversary, such as the OHTTP relay itself or any man-in-the-middle attacker on the relay-to-gateway or relay-to-client transport, to truncate a legitimate chunked-OHTTP message at a non-final chunk boundary. The adversary can then close the outer HTTP body cleanly, causing no decryption error or exception in the receiving application.

This means the receiving application may accept incomplete or truncated data without detecting the issue, potentially leading to undetected data loss or manipulation.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can impact you by allowing an attacker positioned on the communication path (such as the OHTTP relay or a man-in-the-middle) to truncate OHTTP messages without detection.

Because the receiving application does not detect the missing final chunk, it may process incomplete or tampered data, potentially leading to data integrity issues or loss of critical information.

This can undermine the security guarantees of the OHTTP protocol, possibly affecting the confidentiality and reliability of communications that rely on this library.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability involves the failure to detect truncated OHTTP streams where the final cryptographically-signed chunk is missing but the outer HTTP body closes cleanly without error or exception.

Detection would require monitoring OHTTP traffic for incomplete chunked messages that do not include the final signed chunk. Since the vulnerable versions do not raise exceptions or errors on such truncations, passive detection is challenging.

One approach is to analyze network captures of OHTTP traffic to identify chunked messages that end prematurely without the final chunk. This can be done using packet capture tools like tcpdump or Wireshark, filtering for OHTTP traffic and inspecting chunk boundaries.

• Use tcpdump to capture relevant traffic: tcpdump -i <interface> -w ohttp_traffic.pcap port <OHTTP_port>
• Use Wireshark to analyze the capture and look for chunked HTTP messages that do not contain the final chunk.

However, no specific commands or automated detection tools are described in the provided resources for detecting this vulnerability directly on a system or network.

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Mitigation Strategies

The primary mitigation step is to upgrade the netty-incubator-codec-ohttp library to version 0.0.22.Final or later, where the vulnerability is fixed.

The fix ensures that the implementation verifies the presence of the cryptographically-signed final chunk before accepting the outer HTTP body as complete, throwing an exception if the final chunk is missing.

Until the upgrade can be applied, consider monitoring OHTTP traffic for suspicious truncations and limiting exposure to untrusted relays or MITM attackers on the relay-to-gateway or relay-to-client transport paths.

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Compliance Impact

The vulnerability allows an on-path adversary to truncate a legitimate chunked-OHTTP message without detection, potentially leading to undetected data loss or manipulation during transmission.

Such undetected data manipulation or loss could impact the integrity and confidentiality of data in transit, which are critical requirements under common standards and regulations like GDPR and HIPAA.

However, the provided information does not explicitly describe the direct effects on compliance with these regulations.

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