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High

Tornado: Urlencoded body parsing omits max_num_fields, so one request can stall the event loop

  • Disclosed: 02.09.2026
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 15:18

Summary

Tornado parses application/x-www-form-urlencoded bodies with urllib.parse.parse_qs and does not pass max_num_fields. A body made almost entirely of separators produces tens of millions of fields, and the parse happens on the event loop before the handler runs, so a single request stalls the whole server.

Where it is

tornado/escape.py, at HEAD e530031405e2154654dedc4c84d5656b557ea310:

python
result = urllib.parse.parse_qs(
    qs, keep_blank_values, strict_parsing, encoding="latin1", errors="strict"
)

max_num_fields is the parameter CPython added for exactly this, and it is absent.

The path to it is entirely server-side and pre-dispatch. RequestHandler._execute parses the body at tornado/web.py:1821, which reaches HTTPServerRequest._parse_body at tornado/httputil.py:636, and the urlencoded branch of parse_body_arguments calls parse_qs_bytes at tornado/httputil.py:1030.

The size that reaches it is bounded only by the body cap, which defaults to the stream's max_buffer_size of 104857600 at tornado/iostream.py:239, applied as the request body default at tornado/http1connection.py:136-140. A 100 MB body of separators is around fifty million fields.

Impact

Denial of service against the whole process, not one request. Tornado is single-threaded and the parse is synchronous on the event loop, so every other connection waits. No authentication is needed if any route accepts a form post, which is the normal case.

Suggested fix

Pass a bound:

python
result = urllib.parse.parse_qs(
    qs, keep_blank_values, strict_parsing, encoding="latin1", errors="strict",
    max_num_fields=max_num_fields,
)

with a conservative default and a way for applications to raise it. CPython raises ValueError when the limit is exceeded, which maps cleanly onto a 400.

Lowering the default body cap for urlencoded specifically would help too, since 100 MB of form fields is not a shape any real client sends.

Why I do not think this is a duplicate

The published tornado advisories cover out-of-bounds access in the C extension, unbounded accumulation of decompressed chunks in AsyncHTTPClient, the Authorization header surviving cross-origin redirects, credential leakage on curl handle reuse, and cookie attribute validation. The decompression one is the nearest in spirit and is on the client side; this is the server parsing a request body. The call is unchanged at HEAD.

Affected software

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PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Python (PyPI) tornado < 6.5.8 6.5.8

References

CVSS score 7.5/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-1284, CWE-400
Platform
Python (PyPI)
Package
tornado
Disclosed
02.09.2026
Updated
11.10.2026 15:18

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - PYSEC-2026-3928 - PyPA Advisory Database; CC BY 4.0

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-mpf4-983q-p7j4 - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: tornado

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

All (23) in the archive
Total entries
23
First → latest
05.2012 09.2026
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • High 13
  • Medium 8
  • Low 2

Disclosures per year

earlier: 1

Severity:
  1. tornado: CurlAsyncHTTPClient enforces no response-size limit — decompression bomb drives unbounded memory accumulation to OOM
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-103262 < 6.5.9 6.5.9
  2. Tornado: StaticFileHandler follows symlinks outside static root (path traversal)
    High CVE-2026-103263 < 6.5.9 6.5.9
  3. Tornado: Urlencoded body parsing omits max_num_fields, so one request can stall the event loop this entry
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-82397 < 6.5.8 6.5.8
  4. Tornado: Authorization header forwarded across cross-origin redirects in SimpleAsyncHTTPClient
    High · 7.7 CVE-2026-49853 < 6.5.6 6.5.6
  5. tornado AsyncHTTPClient accumulates decompressed chunks without size limit (gzip bomb)
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-49855 < 6.5.6 6.5.6
  6. Tornado has cookie attribute injection via .RequestHandler.set_cookie
    High · 7.2 CVE-2026-35536 < 6.5.5 6.5.5
  7. Tornado is vulnerable to DoS due to too many multipart parts
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-31958 < 6.5.5 6.5.5
  8. Tornado: Quadratic DoS via Crafted Multipart Parameters
    High · 7.5 CVE-2025-67726 < 6.5.3 6.5.3
  9. Tornado: Quadratic DoS via Repeated Header Coalescing
    High · 7.5 CVE-2025-67725 < 6.5.3 6.5.3
  10. Tornado vulnerable to excessive logging caused by malformed multipart form data
    High · 7.5 CVE-2025-47287 < 6.5 6.5
  11. Tornado has an HTTP cookie parsing DoS vulnerability
    High · 7.5 CVE-2024-52804 < 6.4.2 6.4.2
  12. Tornado before 3.2.2 sends arbitrary responses that contain a fixed CSRF token and may be sent with HTTP compression, which makes it easier for remote attackers to conduct a BREACH attack and determin
    High · 6.5 CVE-2014-9720 < 3.2.2 3.2.2
  13. CRLF injection vulnerability in the tornado.web.RequestHandler.set_header function in Tornado before 2.2.1 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary HTTP headers and conduct HTTP response splitting
    High · 7.5 CVE-2012-2374 < 2.2.1 2.2.1

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