Starlette has possible denial-of-service vector when parsing large files in multipart forms
### Summary When parsing a multi-part form with large files (greater than the [default max spool size](https://github.com/encode/starlette/blob/fa5355442753f794965ae1af0f87f9fec1b9a3de/starlette/formparsers.py#L126)) `starlette` will block the main thread to roll the file over to disk. This blocks the event thread which means we can't accept new connections. ### Details Please see this discussion for details: https://github.com/encode/starlette/discussions/2927#discussioncomment-13721403. In summary the following UploadFile code (copied from [here](https://github.com/encode/starlette/blob/fa5355442753f794965ae1af0f87f9fec1b9a3de/starlette/datastructures.py#L436C5-L447C14)) has a minor bug. Instead of just checking for `self._in_memory` we should also check if the additional bytes will cause a rollover. ```python @property def _in_memory(self) -> bool: # check for SpooledTemporaryFile._rolled rolled_to_disk = getattr(self.file, "_rolled", True) return not rolled_to_disk async def write(self, data: bytes) -> None: if self.size is not None: self.size += len(data) if self._in_memory: self.file.write(data) else: await run_in_threadpool(self.file.write, data) ``` I have already created a PR which fixes the problem: https://github.com/encode/starlette/pull/2962 ### PoC See the discussion [here](https://github.com/encode/starlette/discussions/2927#discussioncomment-13721403) for steps on how to reproduce. ### Impact To be honest, very low and not many users will be impacted. Parsing large forms is already CPU intensive so the additional IO block doesn't slow down `starlette` that much on systems with modern HDDs/SSDs. If someone is running on tape they might see a greater impact.
describes (1)
Related CVEs.
| ID | severity | exploitable | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2025-54121US | — | — | ||
Starlette is a lightweight ASGI (Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface) framework/toolkit, designed for building async web services in Python. In versions 0.47.1 and below, when pa… | ||||
references
External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.
- https://github.com/encode/starlettePACKAGE
- https://github.com/encode/starlette/blob/fa5355442753f794965ae1af0f87f9fec1b9a3de/starlette/datastructures.py#L436C5-L447C14WEB
- https://github.com/encode/starlette/commit/9f7ec2eb512fcc3fe90b43cb9dd9e1d08696bec1WEB
- https://github.com/encode/starlette/discussions/2927#discussioncomment-13721403WEB
- https://github.com/encode/starlette/security/advisories/GHSA-2c2j-9gv5-cj73WEB
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-54121ADVISORY
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