Tornado has out-of-bounds memory access via C extensionGHSA-cx3h-4qpv-8hc9
LOWGHSA-cx3h-4qpv-8hc9 is a low-severity (CVSS 3.7) CWE-126 vulnerability in tornado. A fix is available for tornado — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-cx3h-4qpv-8hc9.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-cx3h-4qpv-8hc9 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
tornadoReal-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
Summary
Tornado's optional native extension tornado.speedups implements websocket_mask without validating that the mask argument is exactly four bytes long. The C function reads four bytes from mask unconditionally, even when Python passes a shorter byte string. This can read beyond the provided buffer, exposing up to 3 bytes of uninitialized memory.
The behavior is reachable from Tornado's XSRF token decoder when xsrf_cookies=True and the native extension is active.
Mitigations
This bug is fixed in Tornado 6.5.6. Prior to upgrading to this version, setting the environment variable TORNADO_EXTENSION=0 will disable the vulnerable code (at the expense of reducing websocket performance).
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | tornado | all versions | 6.5.6pip install --upgrade 'tornado==6.5.6' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for tornado, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update tornado to 6.5.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-cx3h-4qpv-8hc9 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-cx3h-4qpv-8hc9 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.