gh-119451: Fix a potential denial of service in http.client (GH-119454)

Reading the whole body of the HTTP response could cause OOM if
the Content-Length value is too large even if the server does not send
a large amount of data. Now the HTTP client reads large data by chunks,
therefore the amount of consumed memory is proportional to the amount
of sent data.

Lib/http/client.py

@@ -111,6 +111,11 @@
 _MAXLINE = 65536
 _MAXHEADERS = 100
 
+# Data larger than this will be read in chunks, to prevent extreme
+# overallocation.
+_MIN_READ_BUF_SIZE = 1 << 20
+
+
 # Header name/value ABNF (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7230#section-3.2)
 #
 # VCHAR          = %x21-7E
@@ -642,10 +647,25 @@ def _safe_read(self, amt):
         reading. If the bytes are truly not available (due to EOF), then the
         IncompleteRead exception can be used to detect the problem.
         """
-        data = self.fp.read(amt)
+        cursize = min(amt, _MIN_READ_BUF_SIZE)
-        if len(data) < amt:
+        data = self.fp.read(cursize)
-            raise IncompleteRead(data, amt-len(data))
+        if len(data) >= amt:
-        return data
+            return data
+        if len(data) < cursize:
+            raise IncompleteRead(data, amt - len(data))
+
+        data = io.BytesIO(data)
+        data.seek(0, 2)
+        while True:
+            # This is a geometric increase in read size (never more than
+            # doubling out the current length of data per loop iteration).
+            delta = min(cursize, amt - cursize)
+            data.write(self.fp.read(delta))
+            if data.tell() >= amt:
+                return data.getvalue()
+            cursize += delta
+            if data.tell() < cursize:
+                raise IncompleteRead(data.getvalue(), amt - data.tell())
 
     def _safe_readinto(self, b):
         """Same as _safe_read, but for reading into a buffer."""

Lib/test/test_httplib.py

@@ -1511,6 +1511,72 @@ def run_server():
         thread.join()
         self.assertEqual(result, b"proxied data\n")
 
+    def test_large_content_length(self):
+        serv = socket.create_server((HOST, 0))
+        self.addCleanup(serv.close)
+
+        def run_server():
+            [conn, address] = serv.accept()
+            with conn:
+                while conn.recv(1024):
+                    conn.sendall(
+                        b"HTTP/1.1 200 Ok\r\n"
+                        b"Content-Length: %d\r\n"
+                        b"\r\n" % size)
+                    conn.sendall(b'A' * (size//3))
+                    conn.sendall(b'B' * (size - size//3))
+
+        thread = threading.Thread(target=run_server)
+        thread.start()
+        self.addCleanup(thread.join, 1.0)
+
+        conn = client.HTTPConnection(*serv.getsockname())
+        try:
+            for w in range(15, 27):
+                size = 1 << w
+                conn.request("GET", "/")
+                with conn.getresponse() as response:
+                    self.assertEqual(len(response.read()), size)
+        finally:
+            conn.close()
+            thread.join(1.0)
+
+    def test_large_content_length_truncated(self):
+        serv = socket.create_server((HOST, 0))
+        self.addCleanup(serv.close)
+
+        def run_server():
+            while True:
+                [conn, address] = serv.accept()
+                with conn:
+                    conn.recv(1024)
+                    if not size:
+                        break
+                    conn.sendall(
+                        b"HTTP/1.1 200 Ok\r\n"
+                        b"Content-Length: %d\r\n"
+                        b"\r\n"
+                        b"Text" % size)
+
+        thread = threading.Thread(target=run_server)
+        thread.start()
+        self.addCleanup(thread.join, 1.0)
+
+        conn = client.HTTPConnection(*serv.getsockname())
+        try:
+            for w in range(18, 65):
+                size = 1 << w
+                conn.request("GET", "/")
+                with conn.getresponse() as response:
+                    self.assertRaises(client.IncompleteRead, response.read)
+                conn.close()
+        finally:
+            conn.close()
+            size = 0
+            conn.request("GET", "/")
+            conn.close()
+            thread.join(1.0)
+
     def test_putrequest_override_domain_validation(self):
         """
         It should be possible to override the default validation

Misc/NEWS.d/next/Security/2024-05-23-11-47-48.gh-issue-119451.qkJe9-.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+Fix a potential memory denial of service in the :mod:`http.client` module.
+When connecting to a malicious server, it could cause
+an arbitrary amount of memory to be allocated.
+This could have led to symptoms including a :exc:`MemoryError`, swapping, out
+of memory (OOM) killed processes or containers, or even system crashes.