CVE-2025-66471

A decompression handling flaw has been discovered in urllib3. 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.

This is an Important flaw in urllib3's streaming API that can lead to excessive resource consumption, including high CPU usage and significant memory allocation. When processing highly compressed data from untrusted sources, even small requested chunks can trigger full decompression, posing a denial-of-service risk to client-side applications utilizing affected urllib3 versions prior to 2.6.0.

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.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.