CVE-2026-6100

A flaw was found in Python's decompression modules, including lzma.LZMADecompressor, bz2.BZ2Decompressor, and gzip.GzipFile. This vulnerability, a use-after-free, can occur if a program attempts to re-use a decompression object after a memory allocation error, especially when the system is experiencing high memory usage. Exploitation of this flaw could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or access sensitive data. The vulnerability is only present if the program re-uses decompressor instances across multiple decompression calls even after a MemoryError is raised during decompression. Using the helper functions to one-shot decompress data such as lzma.decompress(), bz2.decompress(), gzip.decompress(), and zlib.decompress() are not affected as a new decompressor instance is used per call. If the decompressor instance is not re-used after an error condition, this usage is similarly not vulnerable.

The severity of this flaw is somewhat mitigated on Red Hat platforms. By default processes are not executed with root user privilege and are limited in their scope which in turn limits the impact of this flaw.

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.