CVE-2025-54121

Starlette has possible denial-of-service vector when parsing large files in multipart forms

MEDIUM
5.3
CVSS Score
Published: July 21, 2025 at 08:06 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 09:39 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorStarlette

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Severity
MEDIUM5.3
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.7%
SSVC
PoC

Description

Starlette is a lightweight ASGI (Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface) framework/toolkit, designed for building async web services in Python. In versions 0.47.1 and below, when parsing a multi-part form with large files (greater than the default max spool size) starlette will block the main thread to roll the file over to disk. This blocks the event thread which means the application can't accept new connections. The UploadFile code has a minor bug where instead of just checking for self._in_memory, the logic should also check if the additional bytes will cause a rollover. The vulnerability is fixed in version 0.47.2.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 0.47.2
Affected range stops below 0.47.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCPoCNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

5.3MEDIUMGitHub_M
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
LOW
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusDEFERRED
CWE
CWE-770

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