GHSA-pp6c-gr5w-3c5g
python-multipart has Denial of Service via unbounded multipart part headers
Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| PyPI | python-multipart | < 0.0.27 | 0.0.27 |
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Summary
`python-multipart` has a denial of service vulnerability in multipart part header parsing. When parsing `multipart/form-data`, `MultipartParser` previously had no limit on the number of part headers or the size of an individual part header. An attacker could send a request with either many repeated headers without terminating the header block or a single very large header value, causing excessive CPU work before request rejection or completion.
### Impact
Applications that parse attacker-controlled `multipart/form-data` with affected versions of `python-multipart` can experience CPU exhaustion. ASGI applications using Starlette, FastAPI, or other frameworks that invoke `python-multipart` may have worker or event-loop delays while processing malicious upload requests.
### Details
The affected parser states are `HEADER_FIELD_START`, `HEADER_FIELD`, `HEADER_VALUE_START`, `HEADER_VALUE`, and `HEADER_VALUE_ALMOST_DONE`. The issue can be triggered by:
- A multipart part with an oversized individual header value.
- A multipart part with many repeated header lines or an unterminated header block.
Both variants are addressed by enforcing default parser limits for maximum header count and maximum header size.
### Mitigation
Upgrade to `python-multipart` `0.0.27` or later.
If upgrading is not immediately possible, reduce exposure by enforcing request body size limits at the server, proxy, or framework layer. This is only a mitigation; affected versions of `python-multipart` still parse multipart part headers without the default header count and header size limits.
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.