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HIGH7.5

GHSA-x424-64qh-5j54

react/http: A malformed HTTP chunked body can lead to a denial-of-service and peg the CPU

Quick fix

GHSA-x424-64qh-5j54 — react/http: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.

composer require react/http:^1.11.1

Details

### Summary

A malformed HTTP message using `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` can drive `React\Http\Io\ChunkedDecoder` into an infinite loop, pegging a CPU core and freezing the event loop. Because ReactPHP is single-threaded, one such message stalls the entire process for every client until it is killed.

Both directions are affected. `ChunkedDecoder` decodes chunked **request** bodies for `React\Http\HttpServer` and chunked **response** bodies for `React\Http\Browser`, so a server can be attacked by a malicious client and a client can be attacked by a malicious or compromised server.

### Details

`ChunkedDecoder::handleData()` loops `while ($this->buffer !== '')` and relies on the buffer shrinking each iteration. Two states leave the buffer unchanged while the loop condition stays true.

**Terminal-chunk trailer.** After the terminating `0` chunk, any remaining buffer is treated as trailer data to skip:

```php } elseif ($this->chunkSize === 0) { $this->buffer = (string)\substr($this->buffer, $positionCrlf); } ```

When the trailer holds no CRLF yet, `strpos()` returns `false`, PHP coerces that to `0` in `substr()`, and the buffer is never advanced. Neither the error guard (which requires a non-zero chunk size) nor the wait guard (which requires fewer than two bytes remaining) can fire, so the loop re-enters with identical state.

**Off-by-one after a completed chunk.** Once a non-terminal chunk has been fully transferred, the "chunk does not end with a CRLF" error guard requires `strlen($this->buffer) > 2` while the wait guard requires `< 2`. Exactly two non-CRLF bytes slip past both, and because the chunk is already complete nothing is consumed on the next iteration.

### PoC

Run the example server from the `reactphp/reactphp` README and send a malformed request. Note the missing trailing `\r\n`:

``` POST / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: x\r\nTransfer-Encoding: chunked\r\n\r\n0\r\nab ```

The PHP process pegs at 100% CPU and stops answering legitimate requests. A body of `1\r\nAAB` triggers the second state.

The client side is reachable the same way: a `Browser` request to a server that answers with `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` and either malformed body shape hangs the client process.

### Impact

Denial of service. The affected process stops responding entirely and has to be killed.

Servers behind a reverse proxy that parses and re-frames HTTP, such as a typical nginx setup, are not affected on the **server** side, because the proxy normalises the request before it reaches PHP. That mitigation does not extend to the **client** side: outbound requests made with `Browser` reach the remote server directly, so an application fetching attacker-influenced URLs is affected regardless of what sits in front of it.

Are you affected?

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Affected packages

Packagist/react/http
Introduced in: 0.6.0Fixed in: 1.11.1
Fixcomposer require react/http:^1.11.1

References