Python-Multipart: Quadratic-time querystring parsing with semicolon separators causes CPU denial of service
Python-Multipart is a streaming multipart parser for Python. Prior to 0.0.30, when parsing application/x-www-form-urlencoded bodies, QuerystringParser located the field separator with a two step lookup: it first scanned the entire remaining buffer for &, and only when no & existed anywhere ahead did it fall back to scanning for ;. For a body that uses ; as the separator and contains no &, every field iteration performed a full failed & scan over the entire remaining buffer before locating the nearby ;. With N semicolon separated fields in a chunk of size B, this yields O(B^2) byte comparisons per chunk. An attacker can submit a small crafted body of the form a;a;a;... and cause the parser to spend seconds of CPU per request. A handful of concurrent requests can exhaust worker processes. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.0.30.
Problem Types
| Type | CWE ID | Description |
|---|
| CWE | CWE-400 | CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption |
| CWE | CWE-407 | CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity |
Type: CWE
Description: CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Type: CWE
Description: CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity
Metrics
| Version | Base score | Base severity | Vector |
|---|
| 3.1 | 7.5 | HIGH | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
Version: 3.1
Base score: 7.5
Base severity: HIGH
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H