vulnerability / NVI-00011978 / Revision 1
RabbitMQ: Malformed UTF-8 in shortstr properties permanently disables RPC consumers
GitHub lists this reviewed advisory for com.rabbitmq:amqp-client. Published version ranges and source prerequisites are shown below; this is not an inspection of a visitor’s application.
This report has not inspected your inventory, configuration, deployed build, reachability or evidence. A catalog listing and a severity score do not establish exposure or compromise.
01 / Meaning
Why it matters
Published affected context helps an owner decide what evidence to gather. This report has not examined your application.
02 / Applicability
The affected context
Affected versions, configuration prerequisites and known exclusions are public. Confirm each one against the deployed service.
com.rabbitmq:amqp-client
source listed<= 5.35.0
### Summary A single AMQP message with malformed UTF-8 in a shortstr property (for example `correlation-id`) can permanently disable a Java client RPC consumer. The client decodes malformed bytes into U+FFFD replacement characters. Each of those re-encodes to 3 bytes, so a 255-byte property becomes 765 bytes (over the 255-byte shortstr limit). When the application echoes that value back, as the documented RPC pattern does, the encoder throws an unchecked `IllegalArgumentException`. That kills the consumer loop or tears down the channel. The message is never acknowledged, so the broker requeues it and it disables the next consumer that picks it up. Recovery does not help; the service stays down until an operator manually purges the queue. In short: the decoder produces values the encoder rejects, and any client permitted to *use* an RPC service can permanently destroy it for everyone. ### Details `ValueReader.readShortstr` decodes with `new String(b, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)`, which silently substitutes U+FFFD for malformed input: https://github.com/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-java-client/blob/main/src/main/java/com/rabbitmq/client/impl/ValueReader.java#L69-L75 `ValueWriter.writeShorts
03 / Response
What to do next
- investigate
Identify the exact component and deployed version, examine the linked publisher’s conditions, and retain evidence of any mitigation.
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04 / Limits
What this report cannot establish
- Customer inventory, deployment, reachability and exploitation have not been inspected.
05 / Provenance
Sources you can inspect
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- GHSA-7822-rcf6-97fx ↗
GitHub Advisory Database · vendor advisory
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Public revision history
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- Revision 1 ·
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