CVE-2025-66471

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.

Impact

urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once.

When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation.

The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data; CWE-409) on the client side, even if the application only requested a small chunk of data.

Affected usages

Applications and libraries using urllib3 version 2.5.0 and earlier to stream large compressed responses or content from untrusted sources.

stream(), read(amt=256), read1(amt=256), read_chunked(amt=256), readinto(b) are examples of urllib3.HTTPResponse method calls using the affected logic unless decoding is disabled explicitly.

Remediation

Upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.0 in which the library avoids decompressing data that exceeds the requested amount.

If your environment contains a package facilitating the Brotli encoding, upgrade to at least Brotli 1.2.0 or brotlicffi 1.2.0.0 too. These versions are enforced by the urllib3[brotli] extra in the patched versions of urllib3.

Credits

The issue was reported by @Cycloctane. Supplemental information was provided by @stamparm during a security audit performed by 7ASecurity and facilitated by OSTIF.

HTTP library with thread-safe connection pooling, file post support, sanity friendly, and more.

Security Fix(es):

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.(CVE-2025-66471)

HTTP library with thread-safe connection pooling, file post support, sanity friendly, and more.

Security Fix(es):

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.(CVE-2025-66471)

HTTP library with thread-safe connection pooling, file post support, sanity friendly, and more.

Security Fix(es):

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.24 and prior to 2.6.0, the number of links in the decompression chain was unbounded allowing a malicious server to insert a virtually unlimited number of compression steps leading to high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.6.0.(CVE-2025-66418)

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.(CVE-2025-66471)

HTTP library with thread-safe connection pooling, file post support, sanity friendly, and more.

Security Fix(es):

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.(CVE-2025-66471)

HTTP library with thread-safe connection pooling, file post support, sanity friendly, and more.

Security Fix(es):

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.(CVE-2025-66471)

urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). When using the streaming API, the library decompresses only the necessary bytes, enabling partial content consumption. Starting in version 1.22 and prior to version 2.6.3, for HTTP redirect responses, the library would read the entire response body to drain the connection and decompress the content unnecessarily. This decompression occurred even before any read methods were called, and configured read limits did not restrict the amount of decompressed data. As a result, there was no safeguard against decompression bombs. A malicious server could exploit this to trigger excessive resource consumption on the client. Applications and libraries are affected when they stream content from untrusted sources by setting preload_content=False when they do not disable redirects. Users should upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.3, in which the library does not decode content of redirect responses when preload_content=False. If upgrading is not immediately possible, disable redirects by setting redirect=False for requests to untrusted source.(CVE-2026-21441)

HTTP library with thread-safe connection pooling, file post support, sanity friendly, and more.

Security Fix(es):

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.24 and prior to 2.6.0, the number of links in the decompression chain was unbounded allowing a malicious server to insert a virtually unlimited number of compression steps leading to high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.6.0.(CVE-2025-66418)

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.(CVE-2025-66471)

urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). When using the streaming API, the library decompresses only the necessary bytes, enabling partial content consumption. Starting in version 1.22 and prior to version 2.6.3, for HTTP redirect responses, the library would read the entire response body to drain the connection and decompress the content unnecessarily. This decompression occurred even before any read methods were called, and configured read limits did not restrict the amount of decompressed data. As a result, there was no safeguard against decompression bombs. A malicious server could exploit this to trigger excessive resource consumption on the client. Applications and libraries are affected when they stream content from untrusted sources by setting preload_content=False when they do not disable redirects. Users should upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.3, in which the library does not decode content of redirect responses when preload_content=False. If upgrading is not immediately possible, disable redirects by setting redirect=False for requests to untrusted source.(CVE-2026-21441)

Impact

urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once.

When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation.

The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data; CWE-409) on the client side, even if the application only requested a small chunk of data.

Affected usages

Applications and libraries using urllib3 version 2.5.0 and earlier to stream large compressed responses or content from untrusted sources.

stream(), read(amt=256), read1(amt=256), read_chunked(amt=256), readinto(b) are examples of urllib3.HTTPResponse method calls using the affected logic unless decoding is disabled explicitly.

Remediation

Upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.0 in which the library avoids decompressing data that exceeds the requested amount.

If your environment contains a package facilitating the Brotli encoding, upgrade to at least Brotli 1.2.0 or brotlicffi 1.2.0.0 too. These versions are enforced by the urllib3[brotli] extra in the patched versions of urllib3.

Credits

The issue was reported by @Cycloctane. Supplemental information was provided by @stamparm during a security audit performed by 7ASecurity and facilitated by OSTIF.