GitHub Advisoryadvisory · PyPI
GHSA-pp6c-gr5w-3c5g python-multipart has Denial of Service via unbounded multipart part headers
HIGH
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- Aliases
- CVE-2026-42561
- Ecosystem
- PyPI
- Packages
- python-multipart
- 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-770
- Reviewed
- 2026-05-06
Affected packages
• PyPI python-multipart: < 0.0.27 → fixed in 0.0.27
Description
Summary
`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.
Impact
Applications that parse attacker-controlled `multipart/form-data` with affected versions of `python-multipart` can experience CPU exhaustion. ASGI applications using Starlette, FastAPI, or other frameworks that invoke `python-multipart` may have worker or event-loop delays while processing malicious upload requests.
Details
The affected parser states are `HEADER_FIELD_START`, `HEADER_FIELD`, `HEADER_VALUE_START`, `HEADER_VALUE`, and `HEADER_VALUE_ALMOST_DONE`. The issue can be triggered by:
• A multipart part with an oversized individual header value.
• A multipart part with many repeated header lines or an unterminated header block.
Both variants are addressed by enforcing default parser limits for maximum header count and maximum header size.
Mitigation
Upgrade to `python-multipart` `0.0.27` or later.
If upgrading is not immediately possible, reduce exposure by enforcing request body size limits at the server, proxy, or framework layer. This is only a mitigation; affected versions of `python-multipart` still parse multipart part headers without the default header count and header size limits.
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-42561 Python-Multipart is a streaming multipart parser for Python. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling weakness