CVE-2026-54638
Impact
A remote, unauthenticated attacker can cause excessive memory allocation (and resulting CPU / GC pressure, potentially OOM termination) by sending a crafted unencrypted MTProto packet.
(*proto.UnencryptedMessage).Decode read an attacker-controlled 32-bit dataLen field and immediately allocated a buffer of that size via make([]byte, dataLen) before validating that the underlying buffer actually contained that many bytes. A 20-byte packet declaring a ~1.75 GB payload (e.g. dataLen = 0x70000000) forces the runtime to provision and zero-initialize a multi-gigabyte heap allocation before the length is rejected.
Unencrypted messages are part of the unauthenticated MTProto handshake path, so no credentials or established session are required to reach the vulnerable code.
Impact is limited to availability; there is no evidence of memory corruption, out-of-bounds access, or code execution.
Patches
Fixed in v0.145.1 by validating dataLen against the remaining buffer length before allocation (commit 9d5d1f31e).
Workarounds
Upgrade to v0.145.1 or later. There is no in-process workaround for affected versions short of avoiding exposure of the unauthenticated MTProto parsing path to untrusted peers.
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Exploitation outlook
- Low exploitation risk0.35% 30-day exploitation probability — currently an unlikely target, but scores change as exploit code circulates. Riskier than 27% of all EPSS-scored CVEs.
Advisory coverage (2)
External references
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