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HIGH

CVE-2026-53539

CVE-2026-53539 — Python-Multipart: Quadratic-time querystring parsing with semicolon separators causes CPU denial of service

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.

Published Updated Sources: cvelistV5, GitHub_M

Triage

Is it exploited, how likely is exploitation, what does it touch, and how severe do the scoring sources call it.

Exploitation

Unreported

no source claims exploitation

EPSS

0%

chance of exploitation in 30 days

Affects

kludex

python_multipart

CVSS base

7.5

HIGH

CISA SSVC assessment

Three decision points CISA publishes for the CVEs it assesses · SSVC 2.0.3. A stakeholder decision, not a severity score.

CISA

Exploitation

None

none · proof-of-concept · active

Automatable

Yes

can an attacker script all four kill-chain steps

Technical impact

Partial

partial · total control of the vulnerable component

Affected scope

The catalog records vendors and products as separate lists, not pairs, so which product belongs to which vendor is not something this page can say.

Vendors (1)

kludex

Products (1)

python multipart

Every base score collected

Sources score independently and disagree; each row says who scored it and under which version.

ScoreVersionSeverityExpl.ImpactSource
7.5CVSS 3.1HIGH——cvelistV5

Weakness & attack patterns

  • CWE-400
  • CWE-407

Attack patterns reported against this CVE. The ATT&CK techniques below are inferred from its weakness class.

  • T1499Endpoint Denial of Service

Detection

Read off the CVSS vector and the weakness class. Starting points, not rules we have tested.

  • Search application, proxy, and WAF logs for requests touching /x-www-form-urlencoded.

References

1 on the record

Elsewhere on this site

  • kludexevery CVE for this vendor
  • CWE-400other pages naming this weakness

Not in any source we poll

Listed rather than left blank: an empty field and an unmeasured one look identical on screen, and only one is a reason to look elsewhere.

  • No confirmed IOCs, IP addresses, domains, file hashes, or malware artifacts supplied.
  • No organization-specific asset inventory, compensating-control status, or patch deployment evidence supplied.
  • No exploit packet captures, log samples, or incident case IDs supplied.