CWE-409
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)
The product does not handle or incorrectly handles a compressed input with a very high compression ratio that produces a large output.
An example of data amplification is a "decompression bomb," a small ZIP file that can produce a large amount of data when it is decompressed.
urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. From 2.6.0 to before 2.7.0, urllib3 could decompress the whole response instead of the requested portion (1) during the second HTTPResponse.read(amt=N) call when the response was decompressed using the official Brotli library or (2) when HTTPResponse.drain_conn() was called after the response had been read and decompressed partially (compression algorithm did not matter here). These issues could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This could result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data) on the client side. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.7.0.
urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP `Content-Encoding` header (e.g., `gzip`, `deflate`, `br`, or `zstd`). When using the streaming API, the library decompresses only the necessary bytes, enabling partial content consumption. Starting in version 1.22 and prior to version 2.6.3, for HTTP redirect responses, the library would read the entire response body to drain the connection and decompress the content unnecessarily. This decompression occurred even before any read methods were called, and configured read limits did not restrict the amount of decompressed data. As a result, there was no safeguard against decompression bombs. A malicious server could exploit this to trigger excessive resource consumption on the client. Applications and libraries are affected when they stream content from untrusted sources by setting `preload_content=False` when they do not disable redirects. Users should upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.3, in which the library does not decode content of redirect responses when `preload_content=False`. If upgrading is not immediately possible, disable redirects by setting `redirect=False` for requests to untrusted source.
urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. Starting in version 1.0 and prior to 2.6.0, the Streaming API improperly handles highly compressed data. urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once. When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation. The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.
Apache NiFi 1.5.0 through 2.10.0 support gzip-encoded HTTP requests for the application REST API using a Jersey encoding filter. The framework enforced a configurable maximum request size on the compressed payload rather than the decompressed output, allowing a malicious client to send crafted requests that could consume excessive amounts of memory. Upgrading to Apache NiFi 2.11.0 is the recommended mitigation, which relocates response compression to Jetty Server and disables decompression of gzip-encoded HTTP requests.
parsedmarc before 11.0.1 decompresses gzip and ZIP attachments in a single unbounded read with no limit on decompressed output size. Because parsedmarc automatically processes incoming DMARC report emails without user interaction, an unauthenticated remote attacker can send a crafted email with a highly compressed attachment to the monitored mailbox, causing the parsedmarc process to allocate memory proportional to the uncompressed size and exhaust available RAM.
exceljs through 4.4.0 decompresses all entries from supplied xlsx archives into memory without limits on entry size, total size, or compression ratio. Attackers can upload highly compressed workbooks that expand to gigabytes in memory, exhausting available resources and causing denial of service.
Improper handling of highly compressed data in the GZIP auto-decompression handler in Amazon ion-java before 1.12.0 might allow remote actors to cause a denial of service via a crafted compressed Ion document that expands to an arbitrarily large size upon decompression. To remediate this issue, users should upgrade to version 1.12.0 and configure withGzipDecompressionEnabled(false) and/or set an explicit withMaximumBufferSize() when parsing untrusted input.
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in Apache Thrift C++, Java, Python, Go, D, C/GLib bindings. This issue affects Apache Thrift: before 0.24.0. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 0.24.0, which fixes the issue.
Centrifugo is an open-source scalable real-time messaging server. Prior to 6.8.4, Centrifugo unidirectional WebSocket transport with uni_websocket.compression enabled enforced uni_websocket.message_size_limit against compressed wire-frame length in internal/websocket/conn.go advanceFrame, but ReadMessage used io.ReadAll after decompression without an output cap, allowing unauthenticated requests to /connection/uni_websocket to trigger large memory and CPU consumption. This issue is fixed in version 6.8.4.
py7zr is a Python-based library and utility to support 7zip archive compression, decompression, encryption and decryption. Prior to 1.1.3, py7zr's Worker.decompress() extracted archive entries without tracking total decompressed size, allowing a crafted .7z file such as a 15.6 KB archive that expands to 100 MB to exhaust disk or memory before extraction completes. This issue is fixed in version 1.1.3.
rpcx through 1.9.3, fixed in commit 047aec1, contains a denial-of-service vulnerability in protocol.Message.Decode (protocol/message.go). When a message has the compression flag set, the payload is gzip-decompressed via util.Unzip with no limit on the decompressed output size. The only built-in size guard, protocol.MaxMessageLength, is checked against the compressed on-the-wire frame length, not the decompressed size, so it provides no protection. Because decoding (and decompression) occurs in readRequest before authentication, a single unauthenticated connection can send a small (under 2 MB) gzip-compressed message that expands to gigabytes of heap allocation, leading to out-of-memory conditions and service unavailability.
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in elixir-grpc grpc (GRPC.Compressor.Gzip, GRPC.Message modules) allows a denial of service via a gzip decompression bomb. This vulnerability is associated with program files lib/grpc/compressor/gzip.ex, lib/grpc/message.ex and program routines 'Elixir.GRPC.Compressor.Gzip':decompress/1, 'Elixir.GRPC.Message':from_data/2. 'Elixir.GRPC.Compressor.Gzip':decompress/1 calls :zlib.gunzip/1 directly on attacker-controlled bytes with no decompressed-size limit, ratio check, or incremental decoding. Because this module is the registered gzip GRPC.Compressor implementation, it is invoked automatically whenever an incoming gRPC frame carries the grpc-encoding: gzip header. :zlib.gunzip/1 allocates the entire decompressed result as a single binary, so a small highly compressible payload (for example a few kilobytes of zeros, which gzip compresses at roughly 1000:1) expands to multiple gigabytes inside a single call. The max_receive_message_length limit is enforced only against the already-decompressed message, so it provides no protection. An unauthenticated remote peer can send a single crafted frame to exhaust the BEAM node's heap and trigger an out-of-memory kill. This issue affects grpc: from 0.4.0 before 1.0.0.
Pillow is a Python imaging library. Versions 10.3.0 through 12.1.1 did not limit the amount of GZIP-compressed data read when decoding a FITS image, making them vulnerable to decompression bomb attacks. A specially crafted FITS file could cause unbounded memory consumption, leading to denial of service (OOM crash or severe performance degradation). If users are unable to immediately upgrade, they should only open specific image formats, excluding FITS, as a workaround.
Unfurl before 2026.04 contains an unbounded zlib decompression vulnerability in parse_compressed.py that allows remote attackers to cause denial of service. Attackers can submit highly compressed payloads via URL parameters to the /json/visjs endpoint that expand to gigabytes, exhausting server memory and crashing the service.
cpp-httplib is a C++11 single-file header-only cross platform HTTP/HTTPS library. Prior to version 0.30.1, a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability exists in cpp-httplib due to the unsafe handling of compressed HTTP request bodies (Content-Encoding: gzip, br, etc.). The library validates the payload_max_length against the compressed data size received from the network, but does not limit the size of the decompressed data stored in memory.
Klever-Go is the Go implementation of the Klever blockchain protocol. Prior to 1.7.17, a remote, unauthenticated denial-of-service vulnerability in Batch.Decompress (data/batch/batch.go) allows any peer that participates in a topic served by MultiDataInterceptor to allocate multi-gigabyte heaps on the receiving node from a sub-50 KiB gossip payload. A single packet is sufficient to OOM-kill a validator with conventional memory provisioning. Fleet-wide application affects chain liveness. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.7.17.
HedgeDoc is an open source, real-time, collaborative, markdown notes application. Prior to version 1.11.0, HedgeDoc was vulnerable to a YAML alias bomb due to unsafe processing of the note frontmatter. HedgeDoc parsed frontmatter with js-yaml.load (js-yaml v3) via @hedgedoc/meta-marked, which resolved YAML anchor aliases. A compact malicious payload could therefore expand into a huge object structure, consuming excessive CPU. This expansion ran on every request to the publish view (/s/<shortid>) and, when placed under the opengraph key, the editor view (/<noteId>). A ten-level alias bomb could block the single Node.js event loop for roughly 235 seconds per request, causing concurrent requests to hang or drop and rendering the instance unavailable (DoS). Because the note was stored in the database, the impact survived process restarts until the note was removed. toobusy-js did not reliably mitigate the worst cases, as the event loop was saturated before the middleware could respond. This issue was fixed in version 1.11.0.
Http4s is a Scala interface for HTTP services. Prior to 0.23.35 and 1.0.0-M47, an unauthenticated HTTP/2 peer can cause an out-of-memory denial of service in the Ember backend with HTTP/2 enabled. The Hpack wrapper in ember-core/shared/src/main/scala/org/http4s/ember/core/h2/Hpack.scala concatenates HEADERS and CONTINUATION frame fragments and decodes them into a single List, but maxHeaderSize accounting does not include indexed headers or HPACK per-header overhead. A small compressed header block can therefore expand into a much larger decoded representation that remains in memory for processing. Servers exposed to untrusted HTTP/2 traffic and clients directed to an untrusted HTTP/2 server are affected, and concurrent malicious connections can exhaust the process heap. This issue is fixed in versions 0.23.35 and 1.0.0-M47.
CrowdSec offers crowdsourced protection against malicious IPs. From 1.7.0 until 1.7.8, the LAPI router used gin-contrib/gzip with DefaultDecompressHandle globally in pkg/apiserver/controllers/controller.go, causing /v1/watchers and /v1/watchers/login to decompress unauthenticated gzip-compressed JSON request bodies without enforcing a maximum decompressed size and allowing excessive heap allocation that can make LAPI unreachable. This issue is fixed in version 1.7.8.
MessagePack for C# is a MessagePack serializer for C#. Prior to 2.5.301 and 3.1.7, MessagePackReader.ReadDateTime() can allocate stack memory based on an attacker-controlled MessagePack extension length. In the slow path for timestamp extension parsing, the computed tokenSize includes the extension body length from the wire and is used in a stackalloc operation before the extension length is validated as one of the valid timestamp sizes. A very small payload can claim a large timestamp extension body and cause a stack allocation large enough to trigger an uncatchable StackOverflowException, terminating the host process. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.5.301 and 3.1.7.