GHSA-968f-66r5-5v74 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.1) CWE-444 vulnerability in waitress. A fix is available for waitress — see the affected versions and patch details below.
HTTP Request Smuggling in Waitress: Invalid whitespace characters in headers (Follow-up)
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-968f-66r5-5v74 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
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
Impact
The patches introduced to fix https://github.com/Pylons/waitress/security/advisories/GHSA-m5ff-3wj3-8ph4 were not complete and still would allow an attacker to smuggle requests/split a HTTP request with invalid data.
This updates the existing CVE with ID: CVE-2019-16789
Patches
Waitress version 1.4.2 has been updated to now validate HTTP headers better to avoid the issue, completely fixing all known issues with whitespace.
Workarounds
There are no work-arounds, upgrading to Waitress 1.4.2 is highly recommended.
References
See https://github.com/Pylons/waitress/security/advisories/GHSA-m5ff-3wj3-8ph4 for more information on the security issue.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
- open an issue at https://github.com/Pylons/waitress/issues (if not sensitive or security related)
- email the Pylons Security mailing list: [email protected] (if security related)
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | waitress | all versions | 1.4.2pip install --upgrade 'waitress==1.4.2' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for waitress, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update waitress to 1.4.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-968f-66r5-5v74 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-968f-66r5-5v74 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-968f-66r5-5v74. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
All affected Red Hat products ship but do not use the flawed version of python-waitress. The impact for these products is therefore rated as having a security impact of Low. For Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13, because the flaw has a lower impact and the fix would require a substantial amount of development, no update…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15.0 (Stein) | python-waitress-0:1.4.2-1.el8ost | RHSA-2020:0720 |
| Red Hat Quay 3 | quay/clair-rhel8:v3.4.0-25 | RHSA-2021:0420 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-968f-66r5-5v74 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-968f-66r5-5v74 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.