Threat database

### Summary `request.form()` accepts `max_fields` and `max_part_size` to bound resource consumption while parsing form data. These limits are enforced for `multipart/form-data`, but silently ignored for `application/x-www-form-urlencoded`. An unauthenticated attacker can therefore send a urlencoded body with an arbitrarily large number of fields or an arbitrarily large field, even when the application configured limits it believed would apply. ### Details `request.form()` dispatches to a different parser depending on the `Content-Type`. For `multipart/form-data` the `max_files`, `max_fields`, and `max_part_size` limits are forwarded to the parser, but for `application/x-www-form-urlencoded` the parser is constructed without them. It has no `max_fields` or `max_part_size` parameter to receive them, and it appends every field with no count check and accumulates each field's name and value with no size check. The configured limits are therefore both unreachable and unenforced for url-encoded bodies. Because the url-encoded parser does its work synchronously between stream reads, the two attack shapes have different effects: - **Field count** drives CPU and event-loop blocking. A body of ~1,000,000 fields (a sub-10MB payload such as `f0=v&f1=v&...`) blocks the worker's event loop for several seconds while parsing, during which the worker serves no other request. - **Field size** drives memory. A single large field value (e.g. a 50MB value) is buffered in full to build the `FormData`, forcing memory allocation proportional to the request body. The equivalent `multipart/form-data` request is correctly rejected with `400 Too many fields` / `400 Field exceeded maximum size`. ### Impact This Denial of service (DoS) vulnerability affects all applications built with Starlette (or FastAPI) that call `request.form()` on `application/x-www-form-urlencoded` requests. A single request with a very large number of fields blocks the event loop for several seconds, and a single request with a very large field forces unbounded memory allocation; in either case, parallel requests can render the service unusable. A reverse proxy that enforces a request body size limit reduces but does not eliminate the exposure, since a sub-10MB body is already enough to block the event loop. ### Mitigation Upgrade to a patched version, which forwards `max_fields` and `max_part_size` to the url-encoded parser and enforces them while parsing, raising before the oversized field or excess fields are accumulated. The defaults match `multipart/form-data` (`max_fields=1000`, `max_part_size=1MB`) and can be customized via `request.form(max_fields=..., max_part_size=...)`.

### Summary `parse_form()` did not validate the `Content-Length` header before using it to bound its chunked read of the request body. A negative `Content-Length` turned the bounded read into a read-until-EOF, so the entire body was loaded into memory in a single read instead of in fixed-size chunks. ### Details `parse_form()` reads the input stream in chunks, never reading more than the remaining `Content-Length` at a time. The per-chunk size is computed as `min(content_length - bytes_read, chunk_size)`. The header value was parsed to an integer without checking its sign, so a `Content-Length` of `-1` made this expression negative, and `input_stream.read(-1)` reads until end of stream. The intended bounded, chunked read therefore collapsed into a single unbounded read of the whole stream. The amount read is still bounded by what the client actually sends. ### Impact This only affects code that calls `parse_form()` directly with a `Content-Length` header taken from attacker-controlled input and without normalizing a negative value first. No known package is affected: * Starlette and FastAPI drive `MultipartParser` directly from the ASGI `receive()` stream and do not call `parse_form()`. * Known `parse_form()` consumers either do not forward `Content-Length` to it, recompute it from the already-read body, or run behind a layer (such as Werkzeug) that normalizes a negative `Content-Length` to `0`. The realistic exposure is limited to bespoke WSGI or `http.server` handlers that forward raw client headers into `parse_form()`. In that case a crafted request buffers the body in memory at once, degrading availability under concurrent requests rather than causing a complete denial of service. ### Mitigation Upgrade to version `0.0.31` or later, which rejects a negative `Content-Length` with a `ValueError` before reading the stream.

### Summary 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. ### Details In `python_multipart/multipart.py`, both the `FIELD_NAME` and `FIELD_DATA` states located the next separator like this: ```python sep_pos = data.find(b"&", i) if sep_pos == -1: sep_pos = data.find(b";", i) ``` `data.find(b"&", i)` scans from `i` to the end of the buffer and returns `-1` only when there is no `&` anywhere in the remainder. For a `;` separated body with no `&`, this failed full buffer scan repeats once per field, making parsing quadratic in the body length. For example, a 1 MiB url encoded body consisting of `a;` repeated ~500,000 times, submitted with `Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded`, causes the parser to perform on the order of 10^11 byte comparisons, consuming several seconds of CPU for a single request. Cost scales quadratically with chunk size. The parser is reachable through the public `QuerystringParser` class and through the high level `FormParser`, `create_form_parser`, and `parse_form` APIs for url encoded bodies. It is also the parser Starlette and FastAPI use for `application/x-www-form-urlencoded` request bodies via `request.form()`. ### Impact Uncontrolled CPU consumption (denial of service). Parsing is synchronous, so a single small crafted form body occupies the handling worker for seconds, blocking any other work on that worker until parsing finishes. Sustained concurrent requests keep workers continuously busy, degrading or denying service. ### Mitigation Upgrade to `python-multipart` `0.0.30` or later, which treats only `&` as a field separator (per the [WHATWG URL standard](https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#urlencoded-parsing)) using a single bounded scan, making parsing linear in the body length.

### Summary `QuerystringParser` treated `;` as a field separator in `application/x-www-form-urlencoded` bodies, in addition to `&`. The [WHATWG URL standard](https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#urlencoded-parsing), modern browsers, and Python's `urllib.parse` (since the CVE-2021-23336 fix) treat only `&` as a separator. This creates a parser differential: the same bytes are tokenized into different fields than a WHATWG compliant intermediary would produce, allowing an attacker to smuggle extra form fields past an upstream body inspecting component. ### Details In `python_multipart/multipart.py`, the `FIELD_NAME` and `FIELD_DATA` states located the next separator by scanning for `&` and, failing that, for `;`: ```python sep_pos = data.find(b"&", i) if sep_pos == -1: sep_pos = data.find(b";", i) ``` As a result, `;` acted as a field boundary. Because the fallback only triggered when no `&` remained in the current chunk, tokenization also depended on unrelated bytes later in the buffer and on how the body was split across `write()` calls. This is the same class of issue as CVE-2021-23336 in CPython's `urllib.parse`. For example, a body inspecting WAF or gateway that follows the WHATWG rule (only `&` separates fields) receives: ``` role=user&x=;role=admin ``` The upstream parses two fields, `role=user` and `x=";role=admin"`, sees a benign `role=user`, and forwards the request. `QuerystringParser` parsed the same bytes as three fields: `role="user"`, `x=""`, and `role="admin"`. The application (for example via Starlette/FastAPI `request.form()`, where the last value wins) then received `role=admin`, a value the upstream validator never saw. The parser is reachable through the public `QuerystringParser` class, the high level `FormParser`, `create_form_parser`, and `parse_form` APIs, and Starlette/FastAPI `request.form()` for url encoded bodies. ### Impact Interpretation conflict / HTTP parameter pollution. An attacker can smuggle extra or overriding form fields past an upstream component that applies the WHATWG separator rule, reaching the backend with parameters the intermediary did not observe. ### Mitigation Upgrade to `python-multipart` `0.0.30` or later, which treats only `&` as a field separator per the [WHATWG URL standard](https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#urlencoded-parsing). `;` is parsed as ordinary field data, matching `urllib.parse`, browsers, and other compliant parsers.

Python-Multipart is a streaming multipart parser for Python. Prior to 0.0.30, parse_options_header parsed Content-Disposition (and Content-Type) headers with email.message.Message, which transparently applies RFC 2231/5987 decoding. The extended parameter syntax (filename*=charset'lang'value, name*=..., and the filename*0/filename*1 continuation form) is decoded and surfaced under the bare filename/name key, and overrides the plain parameter when both are present. RFC 7578 §4.2 explicitly forbids the filename* form in multipart/form-data. Components that follow RFC 7578, or that do not implement RFC 2231/5987 decoding for multipart/form-data (WAFs, proxies, gateways), may interpret such a header differently. An attacker can exploit that difference to smuggle a different field name or filename past an upstream inspector to the backend. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.0.30.

Starlette is a lightweight ASGI framework/toolkit. Prior to 1.3.0, the HTTP request path is not validated before being used to reconstruct request.url. Because request.url is rebuilt by concatenating {scheme}://{host}{path} and re-parsing the result, a path that does not begin with / (for example @google.com) moves the authority boundary during re-parsing, so request.url.hostname and request.url.netloc become attacker-controlled. Code that reads request.url.hostname (rather than the Host header or scope) can therefore be misled into trusting an attacker-supplied host. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.3.0.

Starlette versions prior to 1.1.0 have a vulnerability in the HTTPEndpoint dispatch mechanism where unsafe reflection is used to select request handlers. This allows non-standard HTTP methods to invoke internal methods not intended as handlers if the subclass does not explicitly restrict HTTP methods, potentially bypassing authorization. The issue is fixed in version 1.1.0.

### Summary When serving static files on Windows, `StaticFiles` resolves the requested path with [`os.path.realpath`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.path.html#os.path.realpath). If a UNC path (such as `\\attacker.com\share`) reaches the resolver, `realpath` causes the process to open a connection to the remote host over SMB (port 445). This is a server-side request forgery (SSRF) that leaks the service account's NTLMv2 credentials to the attacker-controlled host, which can then be cracked offline or relayed to other hosts. ### Details `StaticFiles.lookup_path()` joins the requested path onto the served directory and calls [`os.path.realpath`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.path.html#os.path.realpath) on the result before checking containment with [`os.path.commonpath`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.path.html#os.path.commonpath). On Windows, a UNC path is absolute, so [`os.path.join`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.path.html#os.path.join) discards the served directory and `realpath` resolves the bare UNC path, triggering the outbound SMB connection and NTLM authentication before the containment check rejects the path. The HTTP response is a benign 404, but the credential disclosure has already happened. POSIX systems are not affected. This only affects the default configuration (`follow_symlink=False`), which uses [`os.path.realpath`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.path.html#os.path.realpath). The `follow_symlink=True` branch uses [`os.path.abspath`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.path.html#os.path.abspath), which performs no I/O. ### Impact Applications running on Windows that serve files with `StaticFiles` (directly, or via a framework built on Starlette such as FastAPI) in the default configuration are affected. `StaticFiles` is typically unauthenticated, so any client can trigger the SMB connection and leak the service account's NTLMv2 hash. A secondary impact is discovering internal hosts reachable over SMB by timing responses for valid versus invalid addresses. ### Mitigation Applications not running on Windows are not affected. On Windows, serving static files through a dedicated web server (such as nginx or IIS) instead of `StaticFiles` avoids the issue. Blocking outbound SMB (port 445) from the application host prevents the credential disclosure even if a UNC path is resolved.

Starlette is a lightweight ASGI framework/toolkit. Prior to version 1.0.1, the HTTP `Host` request header was not validated before being used to reconstruct `request.url`. Because the routing algorithm relies on the raw HTTP path while `request.url` is rebuilt from the `Host` header, a malformed header could make `request.url.path` differ from the path that was actually requested. Middleware and endpoints that apply security restrictions based on `request.url` (rather than the raw `scope` path) could therefore be bypassed. Users should upgrade to a version greater than or equal to version 1.0.1, which validates the `Host` header against the grammar of RFC 9112 §3.2 / RFC 3986 §3.2.2 when constructing `request.url` and falls back to `scope["server"]` for malformed values.

Python-Multipart is a streaming multipart parser for Python. Prior to 0.0.27, 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. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.0.27.

Python-Multipart is a streaming multipart parser for Python. Versions prior to 0.0.26 have a denial of service vulnerability when parsing crafted `multipart/form-data` requests with large preamble or epilogue sections. Upgrade to version 0.0.26 or later, which skips ahead to the next boundary candidate when processing leading CR/LF data and immediately discards epilogue data after the closing boundary.

Python-Multipart is a streaming multipart parser for Python. Prior to version 0.0.22, a Path Traversal vulnerability exists when using non-default configuration options `UPLOAD_DIR` and `UPLOAD_KEEP_FILENAME=True`. An attacker can write uploaded files to arbitrary locations on the filesystem by crafting a malicious filename. Users should upgrade to version 0.0.22 to receive a patch or, as a workaround, avoid using `UPLOAD_KEEP_FILENAME=True` in project configurations.

EPSS 2.2%VulnerabilityKludex#cwe-22Germany+5

Starlette is a lightweight ASGI framework/toolkit. Starting in version 0.39.0 and prior to version 0.49.1 , an unauthenticated attacker can send a crafted HTTP Range header that triggers quadratic-time processing in Starlette's FileResponse Range parsing/merging logic. This enables CPU exhaustion per request, causing denial‑of‑service for endpoints serving files (e.g., StaticFiles or any use of FileResponse). This vulnerability is fixed in 0.49.1.

EPSS 0.8%VulnerabilityKludex#cwe-407Germany+6