Medium severity · published Sep 29, 2026
CVE-2026-97688
urllib3: Chunked Deflate streaming can enter an infinite loop
5.3
CVSS
0.3%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. From 2.6.2 until 2.8.0, HTTPResponse.stream and HTTPResponse.read_chunked can enter an infinite loop because the Deflate decoder retains trailing bytes as unconsumed input after reaching end-of-stream and repeatedly decodes them without progress. The issue occurs when an untrusted server sends a chunked Deflate response whose decoded body exceeds a positive finite chunk size and whose encoded body has trailing bytes, specifically a response with Transfer-Encoding: chunked and Content-Encoding: deflate, content decoding enabled, and the positive finite amt=N streaming chunk size. The attack mechanism is that a malicious server returns a compressed chunked response with trailing bytes after the Deflate stream. The impact is excessive CPU usage and a request that does not complete, and network read timeouts do not interrupt the loop because no further socket read occurs. This issue is fixed in version 2.8.0.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.3% · higher than 22% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
UR
urllib3 · urllib3
>= 2.6.2, < 2.8.0 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-97688
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-97688
x_refsource_CONFIRM
https://github.com/urllib3/urllib3/security/advisories/GHSA-gh4c-6fx4-qh6g
x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/urllib3/urllib3/commit/ea2ad7b21a80da3632f80016526a18864586077f
x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/urllib3/urllib3/releases/tag/2.8.0
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