GHSA-8xx6-hgc6-gc2m: SSRF
Summary
When decoding a compressed response body (gzip, deflate, br, or zstd), HTTPX2 fully decompressed each network read before yielding content to the application. A small compressed input could therefore cause a large intermediate memory allocation, even when the application streamed the response to keep memory usage bounded.
Details
HTTPX2's default transport reads the socket in pieces of up to 64 KiB. Before 2.12.0, each piece was inflated completely into one intermediate allocation before any decompressed bytes were yielded.
At DEFLATE's maximum compression ratio of roughly 1032:1, a 64 KiB compressed chunk can expand to about 64 MiB in one allocation. Brotli and Zstandard responses can cause similarly large amplification. Streaming the response did not prevent these transient allocations.
Impact
Applications that fetch resources from untrusted or attacker-influenced servers - such as webhook receivers, link unfurlers, crawlers, SSRF-reachable fetchers, and redirect followers - can experience memory pressure or out-of-memory termination when processing a malicious compressed response. No authentication or user interaction is required beyond issuing a request to the server.
Mitigation
Upgrade to HTTPX2 2.12.0 or later. Patched versions decompress responses incrementally with bounded intermediate buffers, including responses with multiple content encodings.
Affected Software
Remediation
Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.
- Upgrade
Upgrade
pip/httpx2to a version that resolves this vulnerability.Fixed in 2.12.0 - Upgrade
Upgrade
HTTPX2to a version that resolves this vulnerability.Fixed in 2.12.0
Event History
Frequently Asked Questions
Which applications are most exposed to this issue?
Applications that fetch resources from untrusted or attacker-influenced servers are exposed. Examples include webhook receivers, link unfurlers, crawlers, SSRF-reachable fetchers, and clients that follow redirects.
Does streaming a response keep memory usage bounded?
No. Before version 2.12.0, each compressed network read was fully decompressed into an intermediate allocation before content was yielded, so streaming did not prevent transient large allocations.
What does an attacker need to trigger the issue?
An attacker needs the application to fetch a malicious compressed HTTP response using gzip, deflate, Brotli, or Zstandard encoding. No authentication or user interaction is required beyond causing the application to issue the request.
Which versions are affected?
HTTPX2 versions before 2.12.0 are affected.