diff --git a/components/tcp_transport/transport_ws.c b/components/tcp_transport/transport_ws.c
index 6367b0d315..c7bf29b9a4 100644
--- a/components/tcp_transport/transport_ws.c
+++ b/components/tcp_transport/transport_ws.c
@@ -293,7 +293,12 @@ static int ws_connect(esp_transport_handle_t t, const char *host, int port, int
         ws->buffer_len = header_len;
         ws->buffer[header_len] = '\0'; // We will mark the end of the header to ensure that strstr operations for parsing the headers don't fail.
         ESP_LOGD(TAG, "Read header chunk %d, current header size: %d", len, header_len);
-    } while (NULL == strstr(ws->buffer, delimiter) && header_len < WS_BUFFER_SIZE);
+    } while (NULL == strstr(ws->buffer, delimiter) && header_len < WS_BUFFER_SIZE - 1);
+
+    if (header_len >= WS_BUFFER_SIZE - 1) {
+        ESP_LOGE(TAG, "Header size exceeded buffer size");
+        return -1;
+    }
 
     char* delim_ptr = strstr(ws->buffer, delimiter);