The vulnerability stems from the underlying Varnish Cache component (specifically versions <6.0.11) which kube-httpcache integrates. The core issue is in Varnish's handling of HTTP/2 pseudo-headers when generating HTTP/1 backend requests, not in kube-httpcache's own Go code. While the Varnish mitigation involves adding checks in the vcl_recv VCL function, this is part of Varnish's configuration rather than a function in kube-httpcache's codebase. The kube-httpcache vulnerability exists because it bundled a vulnerable Varnish version, not due to its own implemented functions. No specific functions within the kube-httpcache Go project were identified as directly vulnerable with high confidence.