CVE-2022-24761 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-444 vulnerability in waitress. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2022-24761 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
HTTP Request Smuggling in waitress
Real-World Exposure
waitressReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Waitress is a Web Server Gateway Interface server for Python 2 and 3. When using Waitress versions 2.1.0 and prior behind a proxy that does not properly validate the incoming HTTP request matches the RFC7230 standard, Waitress and the frontend proxy may disagree on where one request starts and where it ends. This would allow requests to be smuggled via the front-end proxy to waitress and later behavior. There are two classes of vulnerability that may lead to request smuggling that are addressed by this advisory: The use of Python's int() to parse strings into integers, leading to +10 to be parsed as 10, or 0x01 to be parsed as 1, where as the standard specifies that the string should contain only digits or hex digits; and Waitress does not support chunk extensions, however it was discarding them without validating that they did not contain illegal characters. This vulnerability has been patched in Waitress 2.1.1. A workaround is available. When deploying a proxy in front of waitress, turning on any and all functionality to make sure that the request matches the RFC7230 standard. Certain proxy servers may not have this functionality though and users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version of waitress instead.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | waitress | all versions | 2.1.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for waitress. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update waitress to 2.1.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-24761 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2022-24761 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2022-24761. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-24761 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2022-24761 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.