GHSA-8v8h-hg4w-mvq2Medium

hpack: Unbounded variable integer decoding can cause run-away computation on malformed input

Published
September 24, 2026
Last Modified
September 24, 2026

🔗 CVE IDs covered (1)

📋 Description

Impact

Users of the python-hyper/hpack library, most commonly used as downstream dependency of the python-hyper/h2 library (an HTTP/2 client and server implementation). Unbounded variable integer decoding can cause run-away computation on malformed input leading to O(n^2) runtime, effectively blocking further processing with large enough unsanitized input.

Patches

A fix is available in python-hyper/hpack v4.2.0 to restricted variable integer decoding to uint32 to prevent run-away computation.

Workarounds

Sanitize input to hpack decoder for long sequences of 0xFF values to prevent malicious use.

🎯 Affected products1

  • pip/hpack:<= 4.1.0

🔗 References (7)