Description
Waitress version 1.4.2 allows a DOS attack When waitress receives a header that contains invalid characters. When a header like "Bad-header: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\x10" is received, it will cause the regular expression engine to catastrophically backtrack causing the process to use 100% CPU time and blocking any other interactions. This allows an attacker to send a single request with an invalid header and take the service offline. This issue was introduced in version 1.4.2 when the regular expression was updated to attempt to match the behaviour required by errata associated with RFC7230. The regular expression that is used to validate incoming headers has been updated in version 1.4.3, it is recommended that people upgrade to the new version of Waitress as soon as possible.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pylons | Waitress | = 1.4.2 | — |
Public exploits
Exploit or proof-of-concept code for this vulnerability is publicly available, which lowers the bar for attackers. Treat it as a reason to patch sooner.
GitHub 1 repository
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motikan2010/CVE-2020-5236 ★ 3 · Feb 6, 2020
Waitress 1.4.2 ReDoS - CVE-2020-5236 (Blog Sample Code)
Sources: PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit Framework, Exploit-DB — updated daily. Only links are listed; no exploit code is hosted here.
Affected packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PyPI | waitress | >= 1.4.2, < 1.4.3 | 1.4.3 | GHSA-73m2-3pwg-5fgc |
| PyPI | waitress | < 1.4.3 | 1.4.3 | PYSEC-2020-155 |