CVE-2026-53537
Summary
parse_options_header parsed Content-Disposition (and Content-Type) headers with email.message.Message, which transparently applies RFC 2231/5987 decoding. The extended parameter syntax (filename*=charset'lang'value, name*=..., and the filename*0/filename*1 continuation form) is decoded and surfaced under the bare filename/name key, and overrides the plain parameter when both are present. RFC 7578 §4.2 explicitly forbids the filename* form in multipart/form-data.
Components that follow RFC 7578, or that do not implement RFC 2231/5987 decoding for multipart/form-data (WAFs, proxies, gateways), may interpret such a header differently. An attacker can exploit that difference to smuggle a different field name or filename past an upstream inspector to the backend.
Details
Given both a plain and an extended parameter, the extended value won. For example:
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="comment"; name*=utf-8''role
An inspector following RFC 7578 sees the field comment, while the returned value was name=role. The same applies to filenames:
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="upload"; filename="safe.txt"; filename*=utf-8''evil.php
The inspector sees safe.txt, while the returned value was filename=evil.php. Continuation parameters (filename*0, filename*1, and so on) were likewise reassembled into a filename invisible to a plain filename= match, and percent encoded sequences in the extended value were decoded (so ..%2F, %00, and similar appeared in the returned filename).
This affects the high level parse_options_header, FormParser, create_form_parser, and parse_form APIs, and reaches Starlette/FastAPI through request.form(), where the smuggled value is exposed as the form field name or UploadFile.filename.
Impact
This is an interpretation conflict (CWE-436) with other multipart/form-data parsers. An attacker able to submit multipart/form-data can present a different field name or filename to an upstream body inspecting component than the one delivere
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Exploitation outlook
- Low exploitation risk0.18% 30-day exploitation probability — currently an unlikely target, but scores change as exploit code circulates. Riskier than 7% of all EPSS-scored CVEs.
Advisory coverage (1)
External references
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