CVE-2022-45061

A vulnerability was discovered in Python. A quadratic algorithm exists when processing inputs to the IDNA (RFC 3490) decoder, such that a crafted unreasonably long name being presented to the decoder could lead to a CPU denial of service. Hostnames are often supplied by remote servers that could be controlled by a malicious actor, which could trigger excessive CPU consumption on the client attempting to make use of an attacker-supplied hostname.

This is an algorithmic complexity flaw found in Python's idna module. The vulnerability exists in the IDNA decoder, which uses an inefficient quadratic-time algorithm. It is triggered when processing a crafted, unreasonably long hostname supplied by a remote attacker, leading to excessive CPU consumption. This results in a denial of service (DoS) by making the affected application unresponsive, this flaw is rated as moderate because it impacts the availability of the application process rather than the entire system.

Versions of python36:3.6/python36 as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 are marked as 'Not affected' as they just provide "symlinks" to the main python3 component, which provides the actual interpreter of the Python programming language.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.