CVE-2023-47641

Inconsistent interpretation of `Content-Length` vs. `Transfer-Encoding` in aiohttp

State
Published
Severity
3.4 Low
Published
Nov 14, 2023
Updated
Nov 3, 2025
Reserved
Nov 7, 2023

Read the record on cve.org

Description

aiohttp is an asynchronous HTTP client/server framework for asyncio and Python. Affected versions of aiohttp have a security vulnerability regarding the inconsistent interpretation of the http protocol. HTTP/1.1 is a persistent protocol, if both Content-Length(CL) and Transfer-Encoding(TE) header values are present it can lead to incorrect interpretation of two entities that parse the HTTP and we can poison other sockets with this incorrect interpretation. A possible Proof-of-Concept (POC) would be a configuration with a reverse proxy(frontend) that accepts both CL and TE headers and aiohttp as backend. As aiohttp parses anything with chunked, we can pass a chunked123 as TE, the frontend entity will ignore this header and will parse Content-Length. The impact of this vulnerability is that it is possible to bypass any proxy rule, poisoning sockets to other users like passing Authentication Headers, also if it is present an Open Redirect an attacker could combine it to redirect random users to another website and log the request. This vulnerability has been addressed in release 3.8.0 of aiohttp. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.13.4 LowCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:NGitHub_M

Weaknesses

  • CWE-444 Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests ('HTTP Request/Response Smuggling')

Affected Products

ProductVersions
aiohttpaio-libs
  • < 3.8.0Affected

References

Every record here comes from the CVE Program’s CVE List. © 1999–2026 The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. The records are reproduced under the CVE Program terms of use.