CVE-2026-93925 in Thrift
Summary
by MITRE • 10/02/2026
Stack-based buffer overflow, Incorrect bitwise shift of integer vulnerability in Apache Thrift C++ THeaderProtocol.
This issue affects Apache Thrift: before 0.25.0.
Users are recommended to upgrade to version 0.25.0, which fixes the issue.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/02/2026
The Apache Thrift framework serves as a cross-language service development tool widely adopted in distributed systems for efficient remote procedure calls and data serialization. Within this ecosystem, the C++ implementation relies on specific protocol handlers to manage metadata transmission between client and server endpoints. A critical security flaw has been identified within the THeaderProtocol component of the Apache Thrift C++ library prior to version 0.25.0. This vulnerability stems from a combination of an incorrect bitwise shift operation applied to integer values and a subsequent stack-based buffer overflow condition. The issue arises during the parsing or processing of header data, where malformed input can trigger unintended memory operations that compromise the integrity of the application's execution environment.
The technical root cause involves improper validation of bit manipulation logic when handling protocol headers. Specifically, an incorrect bitwise shift operation leads to miscalculated offsets or lengths within the internal buffer management structures. When this erroneous calculation is used to determine how much data to copy from a user-controlled input source into a fixed-size stack-allocated buffer, it results in writing more data than the buffer can hold. This overflow overwrites adjacent memory locations on the call stack, including return addresses and saved frame pointers. An attacker who can control the content of the Thrift service requests may exploit this condition to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the affected process or cause a denial of service by crashing the application through segmentation faults.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability poses significant risks to services relying on Apache Thrift for inter-process communication. If exploited successfully, it allows remote attackers to achieve full control over the compromised system, potentially leading to data exfiltration, lateral movement within the network, or persistent backdoor installation. Even without successful code execution attempts, the instability introduced by stack corruption can lead to frequent service interruptions and resource exhaustion, impacting availability for downstream consumers of the Thrift-based services. The severity is heightened in environments where Thrift servers are exposed directly to untrusted networks or process low-privilege user inputs without adequate sanitization layers.
This vulnerability aligns with Common Weakness Enumeration identifiers such as CWE-190 for integer overflow resulting from incorrect bitwise shifts and CWE-121 for stack-based buffer overflows caused by insufficient bounds checking during data copying operations. In the context of the MITRE ATT&CK framework, exploitation techniques associated with this flaw map to T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter via code injection or execution through memory corruption, as well as potential persistence mechanisms if shellcode is deployed successfully. Defense-in-depth strategies should include upgrading immediately to Apache Thrift version 0.25.0 or later, which contains the necessary patches for these logic errors. Additionally, organizations should enforce strict input validation on all Thrift service endpoints and consider deploying runtime application self-protection tools that can detect abnormal memory access patterns indicative of buffer overflow attempts.