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.
Fix
Patch, vendor advisory and mitigation references on NVD 2
- https://github.com/urllib3/urllib3/commit/ea2ad7b21a80da3632f80016526a18864586077f Patch
- https://github.com/urllib3/urllib3/security/advisories/GHSA-gh4c-6fx4-qh6g Mitigation, Vendor Advisory
Vendor advisories in the News 1
- USN-8926-1: urllib3 vulnerabilities Ubuntu Security Notices · 2026-10-14
Every line above is quoted from NVD, CISA, Microsoft, the vendor's own advisory or DISA; nothing is generated.
Change history 1
- First seenCVSS 6.9 · pythonNVD modified 2026-10-13 20:21
Affected (CPE criteria) 1
cpe:2.3:a:python:urllib3:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*