NetSight
high7.5

CVE-2026-56740

JLine3 Telnet server: Unauthenticated Remote Memory Exhaustion via Unbounded Telnet NEW-ENVIRON Variables

Impact

JLine is a Java library for handling console input. Prior to 3.30.14, 4.0.16, and 4.2.1, the JLine3 Telnet server remote-telnet module does not limit the number of environment variables a client may inject via the Telnet NEW-ENVIRON option, and TelnetIO.readNEVariables() in TelnetIO.java:1127-1180 stores each variable pair in a HashMap held by ConnectionData, allowing an unauthenticated attacker to flood unique variable pairs before the terminating IAC SE byte and exhaust JVM heap memory with an OutOfMemoryError. This issue is fixed in versions 3.30.14, 4.0.16, and 4.2.1.

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixed in
mavenorg.jline:jline-remote-telnet>= 4.1.0, < 4.2.14.2.1

Affected products

VendorProductAffected versions
JlineJline
before 3.30.14
from 4.0.0 before 4.0.16
from 4.1.0 before 4.2.1

Weakness classification

References