Tornado's optional native extension tornado.speedups implements websocket_mask without validating that the mask argument is exactly four bytes long. The C function reads four bytes from mask unconditionally, even when Python passes a shorter byte string. This can read beyond the provided buffer, exposing up to 3 bytes of uninitialized memory.
The behavior is reachable from Tornado's XSRF token decoder when xsrf_cookies=True and the native extension is active.
This bug is fixed in Tornado 6.5.6. Prior to upgrading to this version, setting the environment variable TORNADO_EXTENSION=0 will disable the vulnerable code (at the expense of reducing websocket performance).
{
"nvd_published_at": null,
"github_reviewed_at": "2026-06-12T18:30:19Z",
"github_reviewed": true,
"severity": "LOW",
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-126"
]
}