PYSEC-2026-3388
Tornado has out-of-bounds memory access via C extension
Quick fix
PYSEC-2026-3388 — tornado: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.
pip install --upgrade 'tornado>=6.5.6'Details
### 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).
Are you affected?
Enter the version of the package you're using.
Affected packages
References
- https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/security/advisories/GHSA-cx3h-4qpv-8hc9[WEB]
- https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado[PACKAGE]
- https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/releases/tag/v6.5.6[WEB]
- https://pypi.org/project/tornado[PACKAGE]
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-cx3h-4qpv-8hc9[ADVISORY]
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-49854[ADVISORY]