CVE-2026-97688

Publication date 29 September 2026

Last updated 17 October 2026

Ubuntu priority

Medium

Why this priority?

Cvss 3 Severity Score

5.3 · Medium

Score breakdown

Description

urllib3 is an HTTP client library for Python. From 2.6.2 until 2.8.0, HTTPResponse.stream and HTTPResponse.read_chunked can enter an infinite loop because the Deflate decoder retains trailing bytes as unconsumed input after reaching end-of-stream and repeatedly decodes them without progress. The issue occurs when an untrusted server sends a chunked Deflate response whose decoded body exceeds a positive finite chunk size and whose encoded body has trailing bytes, specifically a response with Transfer-Encoding: chunked and Content-Encoding: deflate, content decoding enabled, and the positive finite amt=N streaming chunk size. The attack mechanism is that a malicious server returns a compressed chunked response with trailing bytes after the Deflate stream. The impact is excessive CPU usage and a request that does not complete, and network read timeouts do not interrupt the loop because no further socket read occurs. This issue is fixed in version 2.8.0.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Package Ubuntu Release Status
python-urllib3 26.10 stonking
Not affected
26.04 LTS resolute
Fixed in 2.6.3-1ubuntu1.2
24.04 LTS noble
Not affected
22.04 LTS jammy
Not affected
20.04 LTS focal
Not affected
18.04 LTS bionic
Not affected
16.04 LTS xenial
Not affected
14.04 LTS trusty
Not affected
python-pip 26.10 stonking
Needs evaluation
26.04 LTS resolute
Needs evaluation
24.04 LTS noble
Needs evaluation
22.04 LTS jammy
Needs evaluation
20.04 LTS focal
Needs evaluation
18.04 LTS bionic
Needs evaluation
16.04 LTS xenial
Needs evaluation
14.04 LTS trusty
Needs evaluation

Notes

mdeslaur

On focal and earlier, the python-pip package bundles python-urllib3 binaries when built. After updating python-urllib3, a no-change rebuild of python-pip is required. On jammy and later, python-urllib3 is bundled in the python-pip package and needs to be patched.

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package Patch details
python-urllib3

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version:

Base score 6.9 · Medium

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Base score 5.3 · Medium

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

    • USN-8926-1
    • urllib3 vulnerabilities
    • 14 October 2026

Other references

Access our resources on patching vulnerabilities