GHSA-hqmh-ppp3-xvm7
pypdf: manipulated stream length values can exhaust RAM
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.
Blast Radius
pypdfReal-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
An attacker who uses this vulnerability can craft a PDF which leads to large memory usage. This requires parsing a content stream with a rather large /Length value, regardless of the actual data length inside the stream.
Patches
This has been fixed in pypdf==6.8.0.
Workarounds
If you cannot upgrade yet, consider applying the changes from PR #3675.
As far as we are aware, this mostly affects reading from buffers of unknown size, as returned by open("file.pdf", mode="rb") for example. Passing a file path or a BytesIO buffer to pypdf instead does not seem to trigger the vulnerability.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | pypdf | all versions | 6.8.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pypdf. 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 pypdf to 6.8.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-hqmh-ppp3-xvm7 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 GHSA-hqmh-ppp3-xvm7 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 GHSA-hqmh-ppp3-xvm7. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-hqmh-ppp3-xvm7 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-hqmh-ppp3-xvm7 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.