urllib3 <2.8: Deflate Decoder Infinite Loop via Chunked Response HTTPResponse
CVE-2026-97688 Published on September 29, 2026
urllib3: Chunked Deflate streaming can enter an infinite loop
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.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-97688 is exploitable with network access, and does not require authorization privileges or user interaction. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality and integrity and availability.
Weakness Type
What is an Infinite Loop Vulnerability?
The program contains an iteration or loop with an exit condition that cannot be reached, i.e., an infinite loop. If the loop can be influenced by an attacker, this weakness could allow attackers to consume excessive resources such as CPU or memory.
CVE-2026-97688 has been classified to as an Infinite Loop vulnerability or weakness.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-97688
Want to know whenever a new CVE is published for Canonical Ubuntu Linux? stack.watch will email you.
