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CVE-2026-53539: Python-Multipart: Quadratic-time querystring parsing with semicolon separators causes CPU denial of service
- Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2026-06-22 · updated 2026-10-25
- Weakness: CWE-400
Description
Python-Multipart is a streaming multipart parser for Python. Prior to 0.0.30, when parsing application/x-www-form-urlencoded bodies, QuerystringParser located the field separator with a two step lookup: it first scanned the entire remaining buffer for &, and only when no & existed anywhere ahead did it fall back to scanning for ;. For a body that uses ; as the separator and contains no &, every field iteration performed a full failed & scan over the entire remaining buffer before locating the nearby ;. With N semicolon separated fields in a chunk of size B, this yields O(B^2) byte comparisons per chunk. An attacker can submit a small crafted body of the form a;a;a;... and cause the parser to spend seconds of CPU per request. A handful of concurrent requests can exhaust worker processes. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.0.30.
Affected products
- Kludex python-multipart: before 0.0.30 — fixed in 0.0.30
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Kludex python-multipart 0.0.30. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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