urllib3 version 2.6.3 is vulnerable to a decompression bomb bypass in its streaming API (`preload_content=False`) when using Brotli support. The issue arises due to three independent code paths in `response.py` that bypass the `max_length` protection introduced in version 2.6.0 to mitigate CVE-2025-66471. Specifically, negative `max_length` values can be produced due to buffer arithmetic in `read()`, `flush_decoder` unconditionally overrides `max_length` to `-1`, and `_flush_decoder()` passes no limit at all, defaulting to unlimited decompression. This allows a malicious HTTP server to trigger an out-of-memory (OOM) condition by decompressing large payloads into memory, leading to a denial of service (DoS). The vulnerability affects urllib3 2.6.3 and Brotli 1.2.0 and impacts applications and libraries using `requests` or `urllib3` to stream content from untrusted sources.
History

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 19:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description urllib3 version 2.6.3 is vulnerable to a decompression bomb bypass in its streaming API (`preload_content=False`) when using Brotli support. The issue arises due to three independent code paths in `response.py` that bypass the `max_length` protection introduced in version 2.6.0 to mitigate CVE-2025-66471. Specifically, negative `max_length` values can be produced due to buffer arithmetic in `read()`, `flush_decoder` unconditionally overrides `max_length` to `-1`, and `_flush_decoder()` passes no limit at all, defaulting to unlimited decompression. This allows a malicious HTTP server to trigger an out-of-memory (OOM) condition by decompressing large payloads into memory, leading to a denial of service (DoS). The vulnerability affects urllib3 2.6.3 and Brotli 1.2.0 and impacts applications and libraries using `requests` or `urllib3` to stream content from untrusted sources.
Title Decompression Bomb Bypass via Negative max_length in Streaming API in urllib3
Weaknesses CWE-400
References
Metrics cvssV3_0

{'score': 7.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: @huntr_ai

Published:

Updated: 2026-06-19T18:45:10.409Z

Reserved: 2026-05-23T14:33:21.716Z

Link: CVE-2026-9375

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

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cve-icon Redhat

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cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-06-19T20:30:04Z