Critical

Insufficient Protection against HTTP Request Smuggling in mitmproxy

  • Disclosed: 21.03.2022
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 12:19

Impact

In mitmproxy 7.0.4 and below, a malicious client or server is able to perform HTTP request smuggling attacks through mitmproxy. This means that a malicious client/server could smuggle a request/response through mitmproxy as part of another request/response's HTTP message body. While mitmproxy would only see one request, the target server would see multiple requests. A smuggled request is still captured as part of another request's body, but it does not appear in the request list and does not go through the usual mitmproxy event hooks, where users may have implemented custom access control checks or input sanitization.

Unless you use mitmproxy to protect an HTTP/1 service, no action is required.

Patches

The vulnerability has been fixed in mitmproxy 8.0.0 and above.

Acknowledgements

We thank Zeyu Zhang (@zeyu2001) for responsibly disclosing this vulnerability to the mitmproxy team.

Timeline

  • 2022-03-15: Received initial report.
  • 2022-03-15: Verified report and confirmed receipt.
  • 2022-03-16: Shared patch with researcher.
  • 2022-03-16: Received confirmation that patch is working.
  • 2022-03-19: Published patched release and advisory.

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Python (PyPI) mitmproxy < 8.0.0 8.0.0

References

CVSS score 9.8/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-444
Platform
Python (PyPI)
Package
mitmproxy
Disclosed
21.03.2022
Updated
11.10.2026 12:19

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - PYSEC-2022-170 - PyPA Advisory Database; CC BY 4.0

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-gcx2-gvj7-pxv3 - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: mitmproxy

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Python (PyPI)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

Total entries
6
First → latest
07.2018 04.2026
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 3
  • High 1
  • Medium 2

Disclosures per year

  1. 2018: 1
  2. 2019: 0
  3. 2020: 0
  4. 2021: 1
  5. 2022: 1
  6. 2023: 0
  7. 2024: 0
  8. 2025: 2
  9. 2026: 1
  1. Medium · 4.8 CVE-2026-40606 < 12.2.2 12.2.2
  2. Medium ghsa-63cx-g855-hvv4 < 12.1.2 12.1.2
  3. High CVE-2025-23217 < 11.1.2 11.1.2
  4. Insufficient Protection against HTTP Request Smuggling in mitmproxy this entry
    Critical · 9.8 CVE-2022-24766 < 8.0.0 8.0.0
  5. Critical · 8.1 CVE-2021-39214 < 7.0.3 7.0.3
  6. Critical · 8.8 CVE-2018-14505 < 4.0.4 4.0.4

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