GHSA-chx6-46f5-w4vp
An unbounded memory accumulation (decompression bomb) in `tornado.curl_httpclient.CurlAsyncHTTPClient` — the client-side sibling gap of CVE-2026-49855 — verified end-to-end on the 2026-08-15 master snapshot (`6.6.dev1`) and present unchanged in the latest release tag `v6.5.8` and on master (checked 2026-08-17). When a Tornado application configures the curl client (the documented deployment for proxy support / advanced TLS options) and `fetch()`es an attacker-chosen or attacker-compromised URL with default `decompress_response=True`, a malicious server replying `Content-Encoding: gzip` with a ~2.8 MB wire bomb drove the client's RSS from 30,884 kB to **1,032,100 kB (~1008 MB) in 3.18 s** (~350 MB/s, monotonic, no plateau) until the kernel OOM-killed the process (exit 137, cgroup `OOMKilled=true`) — with the transfer only 67% complete and **no client-side size check ever intervening**: `curl_httpclient.py` contains zero occurrences of `max_body_size`/`MAXFILESIZE`. The identical bomb against the default `SimpleAsyncHTTPClient` fails cleanly at ~65 MB, because every size gate CVE-2026-49855 added (compressed CL, chunked total, cumulative decompressed size — `http1connection.py:620,676,742`) lives in code the curl client never executes. This is a distinct component from the published advisory (which fixed `_GzipMessageDelegate`/`SimpleAsyncHTTPClient` only) and from the other curl-client advisories (credential handle-reuse GHSA-pw6j-qg29-8w7f, header CRLF GHSA-w235-7p84-xx57); the file's full commit history (latest 2026-06-17) shows no response-size work. ## Details `tornado/curl_httpclient.py` (line numbers identical on master `6.6.dev1`, `v6.5.8`, and the audited snapshot): ```python "buffer": BytesIO(), # :202 — plain BytesIO, no accounting ... else: write_function = buffer.write # :359 — every decompressed byte lands here curl.setopt(pycurl.WRITEFUNCTION, write_function) # :360 ... if request.decompres
Properties
- severity
- high
- summary
- tornado: CurlAsyncHTTPClient enforces no response-size limit — decompression bomb drives unbounded memory accumulation to OOM
- cvss_score
- 7.5
- retrieved_at
- 2026-09-30T23:58:31+00:00
- ghsa_published
- 2026-09-30T23:49:13Z
- source_url
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-chx6-46f5-w4vp
- ghsa_updated
- 2026-09-30T23:49:14Z
- ghsa_id
- GHSA-chx6-46f5-w4vp
- last_source
- GitHub Advisory Database
- cve_id
- GHSA-chx6-46f5-w4vp
- cvss_vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- signal_observed_at
- 2026-09-30T23:58:31+00:00
- is_ghsa_only
- true
Related Entities (5)
VULNERABLE_TO (1)
AFFECTS (1)
HAS_WEAKNESS (2)
REPORTED_BY (1)
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