CVE-2023-47641: Inconsistent interpretation of `Content-Length` vs. `Transfer-Encoding` in aiohttp

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2023-11-14 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-444

Description

aiohttp is an asynchronous HTTP client/server framework for asyncio and Python. Affected versions of aiohttp have a security vulnerability regarding the inconsistent interpretation of the http protocol. HTTP/1.1 is a persistent protocol, if both Content-Length(CL) and Transfer-Encoding(TE) header values are present it can lead to incorrect interpretation of two entities that parse the HTTP and we can poison other sockets with this incorrect interpretation. A possible Proof-of-Concept (POC) would be a configuration with a reverse proxy(frontend) that accepts both CL and TE headers and aiohttp as backend. As aiohttp parses anything with chunked, we can pass a chunked123 as TE, the frontend entity will ignore this header and will parse Content-Length. The impact of this vulnerability is that it is possible to bypass any proxy rule, poisoning sockets to other users like passing Authentication Headers, also if it is present an Open Redirect an attacker could combine it to redirect random users to another website and log the request. This vulnerability has been addressed in release 3.8.0 of aiohttp. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Affected products

aio-libs aiohttp: before 3.8.0 — fixed in 3.8.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: aio-libs aiohttp 3.8.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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