Vulnerability record · CVE-2026-61629 · published 21 September 2026
CVE-2026-61629: Allocation without limits vulnerability
nginx ignition is a user interface for the nginx web server. In versions 2.29.0 through 2.40.0, the gin i18n middleware in nginx-ignition's API server runs in front of every HTTP request and calls `golang.org/x/text/language.ParseAcceptLanguage` on the raw `Accept-Language` header without imposing any size or shape filter. The underlying parser has quadratic-time behaviour on long lists of malformed language tags. The CVE-2022-32149 guard that golang.org/x/text added in v0.3.8 caps the number of `-` characters in the input at 1000, but it does not cap `_` characters even though the parser's internal scanner aliases `_` to `-` before parsing. A single unauthenticated GET request with an `Accept-Language` header built out of `_` separators burns about 2.4 seconds of server CPU on the host running nginx-ignition; ten concurrent attackers saturate a ten-core box for the duration of the attack while consuming ~10 MiB/s of upstream bandwidth. Version 2.40.1 fixes this issue.
Description
nginx ignition is a user interface for the nginx web server. In versions 2.29.0 through 2.40.0, the gin i18n middleware in nginx-ignition's API server runs in front of every HTTP request and calls `golang.org/x/text/language.ParseAcceptLanguage` on the raw `Accept-Language` header without imposing any size or shape filter. The underlying parser has quadratic-time behaviour on long lists of malformed language tags. The CVE-2022-32149 guard that golang.org/x/text added in v0.3.8 caps the number of `-` characters in the input at 1000, but it does not cap `_` characters even though the parser's internal scanner aliases `_` to `-` before parsing. A single unauthenticated GET request with an `Accept-Language` header built out of `_` separators burns about 2.4 seconds of server CPU on the host running nginx-ignition; ten concurrent attackers saturate a ten-core box for the duration of the attack while consuming ~10 MiB/s of upstream bandwidth. Version 2.40.1 fixes this issue.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
References
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2026-61629), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
