CVE-2026-97688

Published Sep 29, 2026

Last updated 8 days ago

CVSS medium 6.9

Overview

Description
urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. From 2.6.2 until 2.8.0, HTTPResponse.stream and HTTPResponse.read_chunked can enter an infinite loop because the Deflate decoder retains trailing bytes as unconsumed input after reaching end-of-stream and repeatedly decodes them without progress. The issue occurs when an untrusted server sends a chunked Deflate response whose decoded body exceeds a positive finite chunk size and whose encoded body has trailing bytes, specifically a response with Transfer-Encoding: chunked and Content-Encoding: deflate, content decoding enabled, and the positive finite amt=N streaming chunk size. The attack mechanism is that a malicious server returns a compressed chunked response with trailing bytes after the Deflate stream. The impact is excessive CPU usage and a request that does not complete, and network read timeouts do not interrupt the loop because no further socket read occurs. This issue is fixed in version 2.8.0.
Source
security-advisories@github.com
NVD status
Analyzed
Products
urllib3

Risk scores

CVSS 4.0

Type
Secondary
Base score
6.9
Impact score
-
Exploitability score
-
Vector string
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
Severity
MEDIUM

CVSS 3.1

Type
Primary
Base score
5.3
Impact score
1.4
Exploitability score
3.9
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Severity
MEDIUM

Weaknesses

security-advisories@github.com
CWE-835

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

Configurations

Related CVEs

  1. urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. From 1.26.0 until 2.8.0, the proxy_ssl_context, proxy_assert_hostname, proxy_assert_fingerprint, ssl_context, cert_reqs, verify_mode, use_forwarding_for_https=True, and CERT_NONE configuration paths fail to remain separated because target-server TLS settings are incorrectly applied to the HTTPS proxy connection. The trigger is that an application uses an HTTPS proxy and configures target-server TLS settings that must remain separate from the proxy TLS handshake, including HTTPS forwarding with target-specific identity or credentials. Applying cert_reqs=CERT_NONE can overwrite proxy_ssl_context.verify_mode in place, and the mutation persists so later connections reusing the same context may connect to the HTTPS proxy without certificate verification. The attack mechanism is that an attacker intercepts and impersonates the HTTPS proxy after the effective proxy policy accepts the attacker's certificate. The impact is that the attacker can observe or modify forwarded traffic or receive a target TLS client certificate, while CONNECT tunneling still preserves the separate end-to-end target TLS connection. This issue is fixed in version 2.8.0.•CVE-2026-97687
  2. urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. From 1.10.3 until 2.8.0, the HTTPResponse.read_chunked and HTTPResponse.stream methods can allocate unbounded memory because the streaming chunk parser buffers the chunk-size field until newline or EOF without a length bound. The trigger is that a malicious server returns Transfer-Encoding: chunked followed by a very long run of bytes without a newline. The attack mechanism is that a malicious HTTP server sends a very long unterminated chunk-size line. The impact is that unbounded memory allocation can exhaust the client process. This issue is fixed in version 2.8.0.•CVE-2026-97689
  3. urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. From 2.6.0 to before 2.7.0, urllib3 could decompress the whole response instead of the requested portion (1) during the second HTTPResponse.read(amt=N) call when the response was decompressed using the official Brotli library or (2) when HTTPResponse.drain_conn() was called after the response had been read and decompressed partially (compression algorithm did not matter here). These issues could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This could result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data) on the client side. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.7.0.•CVE-2026-44432
  4. urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. From 1.23 to before 2.7.0, cross-origin redirects followed from the low-level API via ProxyManager.connection_from_url().urlopen(..., assert_same_host=False) still forward these sensitive headers. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.7.0.•CVE-2026-44431
  5. urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP `Content-Encoding` header (e.g., `gzip`, `deflate`, `br`, or `zstd`). When using the streaming API, the library decompresses only the necessary bytes, enabling partial content consumption. Starting in version 1.22 and prior to version 2.6.3, for HTTP redirect responses, the library would read the entire response body to drain the connection and decompress the content unnecessarily. This decompression occurred even before any read methods were called, and configured read limits did not restrict the amount of decompressed data. As a result, there was no safeguard against decompression bombs. A malicious server could exploit this to trigger excessive resource consumption on the client. Applications and libraries are affected when they stream content from untrusted sources by setting `preload_content=False` when they do not disable redirects. Users should upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.3, in which the library does not decode content of redirect responses when `preload_content=False`. If upgrading is not immediately possible, disable redirects by setting `redirect=False` for requests to untrusted source.•CVE-2026-21441

References

Sources include official advisories and independent security research.