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Re: --max-filesize and --compressed

From: Andreas Mohr via curl-users <curl-users_at_lists.haxx.se>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2026 12:09:32 +0100

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 02, 2026 at 11:13:32AM +0100, Daniel Stenberg via curl-users wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Mar 2026, Stefan Eissing wrote:
>
> > My personal preference would be to apply this to the uncompressed size
> > as well.
>
> I'm leaning towards that as well, and it might be as simple as this:
>
> https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/20787

Another important thing might be the question of
defaults (default behaviour).

Since a decompression bomb is about
achieving near-infinite file size from tiny origin data
(and with raw CPU-generated bandwidth!),
its robust prevention seems to be
much more pressing than
experiencing eventual overflow during
"normal" download activity.

Thus, perhaps a limit value *) for compression-based activity should be
instated *by default* (else
in many cases this configuration state simply
*will not* have been customized, which translates into
any decompression bomb activity succeeding).

But that would probably mean that
decoupling this compression-related config state from
--max-filesize state is
quite important (since/if it has
sufficiently different/unrelated qualities).

*) a suitable one - and perhaps a relatively low value (10GB? Or even much
less, to actively encourage people to have their own suitably larger limit value
configured?) - and perhaps choose a special "marker" limit value, to let
people easily determine (research) that they managed to hit that special
limit value

Anyway, some food for thought.

Greetings

Andreas Mohr
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Received on 2026-03-02