strawberry-graphql: Denial of Service via unbounded WebSocket subscriptions

Description

Strawberry GraphQL's WebSocket subscription handlers for both the graphql-transport-ws and legacy graphql-ws protocols allocate an asyncio.Task and associated Operation object for every incoming subscribe message without enforcing any limit on the number of active subscriptions per connection.

An unauthenticated attacker can open a single WebSocket connection, send connection_init, and then flood subscribe messages with unique IDs. Each message unconditionally spawns a new asyncio.Task and async generator, causing linear memory growth and event loop saturation. This leads to server degradation or an OOM crash.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
high
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2026-04-06 18:00:29 UTC
Updated
2026-06-08 19:51:04 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2026-04-06 18:00:29 UTC
NVD published
2026-04-07

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.07% 21.11%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
7.5 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Credits

  • JFOZ1010 (reporter)
  • patrick91 (coordinator)
  • bellini666 (coordinator)

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
pip strawberry-graphql <= 0.312.2 0.312.3

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence