CVE-2023-54397
highpriority · track · 30EPSS 0.004 · 32 %ileUSEPSS · scored 2026-10-28
Tornado before 6.3.3 contains an HTTP request smuggling vulnerability due to improper parsing of Content-Length headers accepting non-standard characters. Attackers can send crafted HTTP requests with these characters to bypass proxy validation and smuggle requests when deployed behind certain proxies.
cvss
Technical severity, 0–10. One row per scoring source.
base score 0–10 · higher = more severe · hover a vector to decode⚠ sources disagree · medium–critical · 6.5–9
ssvc
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weaknesses
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affected products (1)
Products and version ranges known to be affected.
advisories (1)
Vendor and ecosystem advisories describing this.
- GHSA-qppv-j76h-2rpxTornado vulnerable to HTTP request smuggling via improper parsing of `Content-Length` fields and chunk lengths2023-08-14ghsa · osvUS
## Summary Tornado interprets `-`, `+`, and `_` in chunk length and `Content-Length` values, which are not allowed by the HTTP RFCs. This can result in request smuggling when Tornado is deployed behind certain proxies that interpret those non-standard characters differently. This is known to apply to older versions of haproxy, although the current release is not affected. ## Details Tornado uses the `int` constructor to parse the values of `Content-Length` headers and chunk lengths in the following locations: ### `tornado/http1connection.py:445` ```python3 self._expected_content_remaining = int(headers["Content-Length"]) ``` ### `tornado/http1connection.py:621` ```python3 content_length = int(headers["Content-Length"]) # type: Optional[int] ``` ### `tornado/http1connection.py:671` ```python3 chunk_len = int(chunk_len_str.strip(), 16) ``` Because `int("0_0") == int("+0") == int("-0") == int("0")`, using the `int` constructor to parse and validate strings that should contain only ASCII digits is not a good strategy.
sources
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references (2) nvd
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