Update dependency urllib3 to v2 [SECURITY] #37

renovate · 2023-10-03T04:59:55Z

This PR contains the following updates:

Package	Change	Age	Confidence
urllib3 (changelog)	`==1.26.16` → `==2.6.3`

GitHub Vulnerability Alerts

CVE-2023-43804

urllib3 doesn't treat the Cookie HTTP header special or provide any helpers for managing cookies over HTTP, that is the responsibility of the user. However, it is possible for a user to specify a Cookie header and unknowingly leak information via HTTP redirects to a different origin if that user doesn't disable redirects explicitly.

Users must handle redirects themselves instead of relying on urllib3's automatic redirects to achieve safe processing of the Cookie header, thus we decided to strip the header by default in order to further protect users who aren't using the correct approach.

Affected usages

We believe the number of usages affected by this advisory is low. It requires all of the following to be true to be exploited:

Using an affected version of urllib3 (patched in v1.26.17 and v2.0.6)
Using the Cookie header on requests, which is mostly typical for impersonating a browser.
Not disabling HTTP redirects
Either not using HTTPS or for the origin server to redirect to a malicious origin.

Remediation

Upgrading to at least urllib3 v1.26.17 or v2.0.6
Disabling HTTP redirects using redirects=False when sending requests.
Not using the Cookie header.

CVE-2023-45803

urllib3 previously wouldn't remove the HTTP request body when an HTTP redirect response using status 303 "See Other" after the request had its method changed from one that could accept a request body (like POST) to GET as is required by HTTP RFCs. Although the behavior of removing the request body is not specified in the section for redirects, it can be inferred by piecing together information from different sections and we have observed the behavior in other major HTTP client implementations like curl and web browsers.

From RFC 9110 Section 9.3.1:

A client SHOULD NOT generate content in a GET request unless it is made directly to an origin server that has previously indicated, in or out of band, that such a request has a purpose and will be adequately supported.

Affected usages

Because the vulnerability requires a previously trusted service to become compromised in order to have an impact on confidentiality we believe the exploitability of this vulnerability is low. Additionally, many users aren't putting sensitive data in HTTP request bodies, if this is the case then this vulnerability isn't exploitable.

Both of the following conditions must be true to be affected by this vulnerability:

If you're using urllib3 and submitting sensitive information in the HTTP request body (such as form data or JSON)
The origin service is compromised and starts redirecting using 303 to a malicious peer or the redirected-to service becomes compromised.

Remediation

You can remediate this vulnerability with any of the following steps:

Upgrade to a patched version of urllib3 (v1.26.18 or v2.0.7)
Disable redirects for services that you aren't expecting to respond with redirects with redirects=False.
Disable automatic redirects with redirects=False and handle 303 redirects manually by stripping the HTTP request body.

CVE-2024-37891

When using urllib3's proxy support with ProxyManager, the Proxy-Authorization header is only sent to the configured proxy, as expected.

However, when sending HTTP requests without using urllib3's proxy support, it's possible to accidentally configure the Proxy-Authorization header even though it won't have any effect as the request is not using a forwarding proxy or a tunneling proxy. In those cases, urllib3 doesn't treat the Proxy-Authorization HTTP header as one carrying authentication material and thus doesn't strip the header on cross-origin redirects.

Because this is a highly unlikely scenario, we believe the severity of this vulnerability is low for almost all users. Out of an abundance of caution urllib3 will automatically strip the Proxy-Authorization header during cross-origin redirects to avoid the small chance that users are doing this on accident.

Users should use urllib3's proxy support or disable automatic redirects to achieve safe processing of the Proxy-Authorization header, but we still decided to strip the header by default in order to further protect users who aren't using the correct approach.

Affected usages

We believe the number of usages affected by this advisory is low. It requires all of the following to be true to be exploited:

Setting the Proxy-Authorization header without using urllib3's built-in proxy support.
Not disabling HTTP redirects.
Either not using an HTTPS origin server or for the proxy or target origin to redirect to a malicious origin.

Remediation

Using the Proxy-Authorization header with urllib3's ProxyManager.
Disabling HTTP redirects using redirects=False when sending requests.
Not using the Proxy-Authorization header.

CVE-2025-50181

urllib3 handles redirects and retries using the same mechanism, which is controlled by the Retry object. The most common way to disable redirects is at the request level, as follows:

resp = urllib3.request("GET", "https://httpbin.org/redirect/1", redirect=False)
print(resp.status)

# 302

However, it is also possible to disable redirects, for all requests, by instantiating a PoolManager and specifying retries in a way that disable redirects:

import urllib3

http = urllib3.PoolManager(retries=0)  # should raise MaxRetryError on redirect
http = urllib3.PoolManager(retries=urllib3.Retry(redirect=0))  # equivalent to the above
http = urllib3.PoolManager(retries=False)  # should return the first response

resp = http.request("GET", "https://httpbin.org/redirect/1")

However, the retries parameter is currently ignored, which means all the above examples don't disable redirects.

Affected usages

Passing retries on PoolManager instantiation to disable redirects or restrict their number.

By default, requests and botocore users are not affected.

Impact

Redirects are often used to exploit SSRF vulnerabilities. An application attempting to mitigate SSRF or open redirect vulnerabilities by disabling redirects at the PoolManager level will remain vulnerable.

Remediation

You can remediate this vulnerability with the following steps:

Upgrade to a patched version of urllib3. If your organization would benefit from the continued support of urllib3 1.x, please contact [email protected] to discuss sponsorship or contribution opportunities.
Disable redirects at the request() level instead of the PoolManager() level.

CVE-2025-66418

Impact

urllib3 supports chained HTTP encoding algorithms for response content according to RFC 9110 (e.g., Content-Encoding: gzip, zstd).

However, the number of links in the decompression chain was unbounded allowing a malicious server to insert a virtually unlimited number of compression steps leading to high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data.

Affected usages

Applications and libraries using urllib3 version 2.5.0 and earlier for HTTP requests to untrusted sources unless they disable content decoding explicitly.

Remediation

Upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.0 in which the library limits the number of links to 5.

If upgrading is not immediately possible, use preload_content=False and ensure that resp.headers["content-encoding"] contains a safe number of encodings before reading the response content.

CVE-2025-66471

Impact

urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once.

When streaming a compressed response, urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). The library must read compressed data from the network and decompress it until the requested chunk size is met. Any resulting decompressed data that exceeds the requested amount is held in an internal buffer for the next read operation.

The decompression logic could cause urllib3 to fully decode a small amount of highly compressed data in a single operation. This can result in excessive resource consumption (high CPU usage and massive memory allocation for the decompressed data; CWE-409) on the client side, even if the application only requested a small chunk of data.

Affected usages

Applications and libraries using urllib3 version 2.5.0 and earlier to stream large compressed responses or content from untrusted sources.

stream(), read(amt=256), read1(amt=256), read_chunked(amt=256), readinto(b) are examples of urllib3.HTTPResponse method calls using the affected logic unless decoding is disabled explicitly.

Remediation

Upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.0 in which the library avoids decompressing data that exceeds the requested amount.

If your environment contains a package facilitating the Brotli encoding, upgrade to at least Brotli 1.2.0 or brotlicffi 1.2.0.0 too. These versions are enforced by the urllib3[brotli] extra in the patched versions of urllib3.

Credits

The issue was reported by @Cycloctane.
Supplemental information was provided by @stamparm during a security audit performed by 7ASecurity and facilitated by OSTIF.

CVE-2026-21441

Impact

urllib3's streaming API is designed for the efficient handling of large HTTP responses by reading the content in chunks, rather than loading the entire response body into memory at once.

urllib3 can perform decoding or decompression based on the HTTP Content-Encoding header (e.g., gzip, deflate, br, or zstd). When using the streaming API, the library decompresses only the necessary bytes, enabling partial content consumption.

However, for HTTP redirect responses, the library would read the entire response body to drain the connection and decompress the content unnecessarily. This decompression occurred even before any read methods were called, and configured read limits did not restrict the amount of decompressed data. As a result, there was no safeguard against decompression bombs. A malicious server could exploit this to trigger excessive resource consumption on the client (high CPU usage and large memory allocations for decompressed data; CWE-409).

Affected usages

Applications and libraries using urllib3 version 2.6.2 and earlier to stream content from untrusted sources by setting preload_content=False when they do not disable redirects.

Remediation

Upgrade to at least urllib3 v2.6.3 in which the library does not decode content of redirect responses when preload_content=False.

If upgrading is not immediately possible, disable redirects by setting redirect=False for requests to untrusted source.

Release Notes

urllib3/urllib3 (urllib3)

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