CVE-2026-97688 PUBLISHED

urllib3: Chunked Deflate streaming can enter an infinite loop

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 24.09.2026 Published: 29.09.2026 Updated: 29.09.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: 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
CVSS Score: 6.9

Product Status

Vendor urllib3
Product urllib3
Versions
  • Version >= 2.6.2, < 2.8.0 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-835: Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop') CWE