GitHub Advisoryadvisory · PyPI

GHSA-hm4w-wwcw-mr6r pyasn1: Uncontrolled resource consumption when converting decoded REAL values

HIGH Published 2026-07-21 Modified 2026-07-21 Official page ↗
Aliases
CVE-2026-59886
Ecosystem
PyPI
Packages
pyasn1
Severity
High
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weaknesses
CWE-400
Reviewed
2026-07-21

Affected packages

• PyPI pyasn1: < 0.6.4 → fixed in 0.6.4

Description

Impact The univ.Real type converted its (mantissa, base, exponent) value to a Python float using exact big-integer exponentiation. A BER/CER/DER-encoded REAL value only a few bytes long can carry a very large exponent, causing this computation to attempt to materialize an astronomically large integer. Any operation that triggers float conversion on such a decoded value — prettyPrint(), str(), comparison, arithmetic, or an explicit float() call — consumes excessive CPU and memory, hanging the process. Applications that decode untrusted ASN.1 data and then print, log, or compare the decoded objects are vulnerable to denial of service. Decoding alone does not trigger the issue. Affected components • pyasn1.type.univ.Real — float conversion (__float__() and everything built on it: prettyPrint(), str(), comparisons, arithmetic, int()) • Reachable through the pyasn1.codec.ber, cer, and der decoders, which produce Real objects from untrusted input; also via directly constructed Real values The encoders and the native codec are not affected. Applications that never handle ASN.1 REAL values are not affected. Patches Fixed in pyasn1 0.6.4. Binary (base-2) values are now converted with math.ldexp(), and decimal (base-10) values with exponents beyond float range raise OverflowError without constructing huge intermediate integers. Existing behavior is preserved: out-of-range values raise OverflowError and prettyPrint() renders them as . Workarounds Avoid converting, printing, or comparing decoded Real objects from untrusted sources; inspect the raw (mantissa, base, exponent) tuple instead.

Related

Alias · CVE (1)

  • CVE-2026-59886 pyasn1 is a generic ASN.1 library for Python. vulnerability

Weakness · CWE (1)

  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption weakness

References