CVE-2026-44919: OpenStack Ironic denial of service via infinite checksum loop

CVE-2026-44919 · Severity: medium · CVSS 4.3 · Published 2026-05-14

OpenStack Ironic, a service used to manage and deploy bare-metal servers, is vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack. An authorized user can provide a specially crafted file path (such as a link to an infinite data stream) during the server deployment process, causing the system to hang indefinitely while trying to calculate a checksum. This can exhaust the system's processing capacity, preventing other users from deploying servers and effectively shutting down data center provisioning operations.

Technologies: OpenStack Ironic, ironic (PyPI). Vendors: OpenStack, PyPI.

Quick answers

Is CVE-2026-44919 exploited in the wild?
No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-44919 being exploited in the wild.
How severe is CVE-2026-44919?
Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 4.3, published 14 May 2026.
Which products and versions are affected?
OpenStack Ironic <= 36.0.0, >=23.0.4 <29.0.6, >=30.0.0 <32.0.2, >=33.0.0 <35.0.2, through 35.x before a3f6d73; ironic (PyPI) ECOSYSTEM:introduced=0,last_affected=36.0.0.
Is there a fix for CVE-2026-44919?
A patch was published on 2026-04-30: Fix committed to Ironic repository Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
How is CVE-2026-44919 attacked?
It is attacked over the network, in a hosted service.
Am I affected by CVE-2026-44919?
Check whether you run OpenStack Ironic or ironic (PyPI) at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

Technical details

A logic sequencing error in OpenStack Ironic's image handling code allows for uncontrolled resource consumption. The vulnerability exists because the `_cache_and_convert_image` function in `deploy_utils.py` invokes checksum calculations via `get_checksum_and_algo` before performing file path validation (the blocklist check introduced in OSSA-2025-001). An authenticated attacker with permissions to modify `node.instance_info` can specify a URL such as `file:///dev/zero`. This causes the `compute_file_checksum` function to enter an infinite loop while attempting to hash the stream, permanently stalling a conductor worker thread. Repeated requests can exhaust the thread pool, leading to a full service denial-of-service. Patches have been released across multiple branches (Antelope, Caracal, Epoxy, Flamingo, Gazpacho, Hibiscus) to move validation logic before checksumming.

Affected products

  • OpenStack Ironic >=23.0.4 <29.0.6, >=30.0.0 <32.0.2, >=33.0.0 <35.0.2

Identifiers

  • CVE-2026-44919
  • GHSA-4g73-w726-53h3
  • PYSEC-2026-2524

Timeline

  • 2026-04-25: disclosed: Bug reported to OpenStack Launchpad
  • 2026-04-30: patched: Fix committed to Ironic repository
  • 2026-05-14: advisory: CVE published to NVD
  • 2026-05-19: advisory: OpenStack Security Advisory OSSA-2026-013 released

References

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