[3.14] gh-119452: Fix a potential virtual memory allocation denial of service in http.server (GH-142216)

The CGI server on Windows could consume the amount of memory specified
in the Content-Length header of the request even if the client does not
send such much data. Now it reads the POST request body by chunks,
therefore the memory consumption is proportional to the amount of sent
data.

Author: serhiy-storchaka

Lib/http/server.py

@@ -134,6 +134,10 @@
 
 DEFAULT_ERROR_CONTENT_TYPE = "text/html;charset=utf-8"
 
+# Data larger than this will be read in chunks, to prevent extreme
+# overallocation.
+_MIN_READ_BUF_SIZE = 1 << 20
+
 class HTTPServer(socketserver.TCPServer):
 
     allow_reuse_address = True    # Seems to make sense in testing environment
@@ -1284,7 +1288,18 @@ def run_cgi(self):
                                  env = env
                                  )
             if self.command.lower() == "post" and nbytes > 0:
-                data = self.rfile.read(nbytes)
+                cursize = 0
+                data = self.rfile.read(min(nbytes, _MIN_READ_BUF_SIZE))
+                while len(data) < nbytes and len(data) != cursize:
+                    cursize = len(data)
+                    # This is a geometric increase in read size (never more
+                    # than doubling out the current length of data per loop
+                    # iteration).
+                    delta = min(cursize, nbytes - cursize)
+                    try:
+                        data += self.rfile.read(delta)
+                    except TimeoutError:
+                        break
             else:
                 data = None
             # throw away additional data [see bug #427345]

Lib/test/test_httpservers.py

@@ -913,6 +913,20 @@ def test_path_without_leading_slash(self):
 print("</pre>")
 """
 
+cgi_file7 = """\
+#!%s
+import os
+import sys
+
+print("Content-type: text/plain")
+print()
+
+content_length = int(os.environ["CONTENT_LENGTH"])
+body = sys.stdin.buffer.read(content_length)
+
+print(f"{content_length} {len(body)}")
+"""
+
 
 @unittest.skipIf(hasattr(os, 'geteuid') and os.geteuid() == 0,
         "This test can't be run reliably as root (issue #13308).")
@@ -952,6 +966,8 @@ def setUp(self):
         self.file3_path = None
         self.file4_path = None
         self.file5_path = None
+        self.file6_path = None
+        self.file7_path = None
 
         # The shebang line should be pure ASCII: use symlink if possible.
         # See issue #7668.
@@ -1006,6 +1022,11 @@ def setUp(self):
             file6.write(cgi_file6 % self.pythonexe)
         os.chmod(self.file6_path, 0o777)
 
+        self.file7_path = os.path.join(self.cgi_dir, 'file7.py')
+        with open(self.file7_path, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as file7:
+            file7.write(cgi_file7 % self.pythonexe)
+        os.chmod(self.file7_path, 0o777)
+
         os.chdir(self.parent_dir)
 
     def tearDown(self):
@@ -1028,6 +1049,8 @@ def tearDown(self):
                 os.remove(self.file5_path)
             if self.file6_path:
                 os.remove(self.file6_path)
+            if self.file7_path:
+                os.remove(self.file7_path)
             os.rmdir(self.cgi_child_dir)
             os.rmdir(self.cgi_dir)
             os.rmdir(self.cgi_dir_in_sub_dir)
@@ -1100,6 +1123,22 @@ def test_post(self):
 
         self.assertEqual(res.read(), b'1, python, 123456' + self.linesep)
 
+    def test_large_content_length(self):
+        for w in range(15, 25):
+            size = 1 << w
+            body = b'X' * size
+            headers = {'Content-Length' : str(size)}
+            res = self.request('/cgi-bin/file7.py', 'POST', body, headers)
+            self.assertEqual(res.read(), b'%d %d' % (size, size) + self.linesep)
+
+    def test_large_content_length_truncated(self):
+        with support.swap_attr(self.request_handler, 'timeout', 0.001):
+            for w in range(18, 65):
+                size = 1 << w
+                headers = {'Content-Length' : str(size)}
+                res = self.request('/cgi-bin/file1.py', 'POST', b'x', headers)
+                self.assertEqual(res.read(), b'Hello World' + self.linesep)
+
     def test_invaliduri(self):
         res = self.request('/cgi-bin/invalid')
         res.read()

Misc/NEWS.d/next/Security/2024-05-23-11-44-41.gh-issue-119452.PRfsSv.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+Fix a potential memory denial of service in the :mod:`http.server` module.
+When a malicious user is connected to the CGI server on Windows, it could cause
+an arbitrary amount of memory to be allocated.
+This could have led to symptoms including a :exc:`MemoryError`, swapping, out
+of memory (OOM) killed processes or containers, or even system crashes.