CVE-2026-44241: Micronaut Framework: Unbounded formattersCache in TimeConverterRegistrar Allows Memory Exhaustion via Accept-Language Header

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-05-12 · updated 2026-10-26
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

Micronaut Framework is a JVM-based full stack Java framework designed for building modular, easily testable JVM applications. From 4.3.0 to before 4.10.22, 3.10.6, and 3.8.14, TimeConverterRegistrar caches DateTimeFormatter instances in an unbounded ConcurrentHashMap<String, DateTimeFormatter> whose key is derived from the @Format annotation pattern concatenated with the locale from the HTTP Accept-Language header. Because Locale.forLanguageTag() accepts arbitrary BCP 47 private-use extensions (en-x-a001, en-x-a002, …), an unauthenticated attacker can generate an unlimited number of unique cache keys by sending requests with novel locale tags, growing the cache until heap memory is exhausted and the JVM crashes. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.10.22, 3.10.6, and 3.8.14.

Affected products

micronaut-projects micronaut-core: from 4.3.0, < 4.10.22; from 3.10.0, < 3.10.6; before 3.8.14

References

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