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  5. CVE-2016-6581

CVE-2016-6581: HPACK Denial of Service vulnerability (HPACK Bomb)

July 5, 2019 (updated September 20, 2024)

A HTTP/2 implementation built using any version of the Python HPACK library between v1.0.0 and v2.2.0 could be targeted for a denial of service attack, specifically a so-called “HPACK Bomb” attack. This attack occurs when an attacker inserts a header field that is exactly the size of the HPACK dynamic header table into the dynamic header table. The attacker can then send a header block that is simply repeated requests to expand that field in the dynamic table. This can lead to a gigantic compression ratio of 4,096 or better, meaning that 16kB of data can decompress to 64MB of data on the target machine.

References

  • github.com/advisories/GHSA-ffq8-576r-v26g
  • github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/hpack/PYSEC-2017-87.yaml
  • github.com/python-hyper/hpack
  • nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-6581
  • python-hyper.org/hpack/en/latest/security/CVE-2016-6581.html
  • web.archive.org/web/20200227233559/http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/92315

Code Behaviors & Features

Detect and mitigate CVE-2016-6581 with GitLab Dependency Scanning

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Affected versions

All versions starting from 1.0.0 before 2.3.0

Fixed versions

  • 2.3.0

Solution

Upgrade to version 2.3.0 or above.

Impact 7.5 HIGH

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Learn more about CVSS

Source file

pypi/hpack/CVE-2016-6581.yml

Spotted a mistake? Edit the file on GitLab.

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