Denial of service via unenforced urlencoded limits
Published Jun 22, 2026 · Updated Jun 22, 2026
Denial of service in Starlette 0.4.1 through 1.3.0 allows remote attackers to exhaust CPU and memory via urlencoded form bodies. The urlencoded parser appends every field without a count check and accumulates each field name and value without a size check, ignoring configured max_fields and max_part_size limits. Applications are exposed only when an endpoint calls request.form() for application/x-www-form-urlencoded; crafted bodies can block the event loop or force memory allocation until service is unavailable.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in Starlette 0.4.1 through 1.3.0 allows remote attackers to exhaust CPU and memory via urlencoded form bodies. The urlencoded parser appends every field without a count check and accumulates each field name and value without a size check, ignoring configured max_fields and max_part_size limits. Applications are exposed only when an endpoint calls request.form() for application/x-www-form-urlencoded; crafted bodies can block the event loop or force memory allocation until service is unavailable.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-54283
- Published
- Jun 22, 2026
- Updated
- Jun 22, 2026
- Vendor
- Kludex
- Product
- Starlette
- Classifications
- CWE-770, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Jun 22, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Jun 22, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=>= 0.4.1, < 1.3.1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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