diff --git a/Lib/test/test_codecs.py b/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
index 93660f7a19811f..f2a1ae3f790f2e 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
@@ -668,6 +668,8 @@ def test_surrogatepass_handler(self):
         self.assertTrue(codecs.lookup_error("surrogatepass"))
         with self.assertRaises(UnicodeDecodeError):
             b"abc\xed\xa0".decode("utf-8", "surrogatepass")
+        with self.assertRaises(UnicodeDecodeError):
+            b"abc\xed\xa0z".decode("utf-8", "surrogatepass")
 
 @unittest.skipUnless(sys.platform == 'win32',
                      'cp65001 is a Windows-only codec')
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 9b27caf00ebc70..16741cd405870f 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -10,6 +10,9 @@ What's New in Python 3.4.0 Alpha 1?
 Core and Builtins
 -----------------
 
+- Issue #16336: fix input checking in the surrogatepass error handler.
+  Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.
+
 - Issue #8401: assigning an int to a bytearray slice (e.g. b[3:4] = 5) now
   raises an error.
 
diff --git a/Python/codecs.c b/Python/codecs.c
index 5cfb1c90014e26..37ae41b1ca43a4 100644
--- a/Python/codecs.c
+++ b/Python/codecs.c
@@ -791,10 +791,10 @@ PyCodec_SurrogatePassErrors(PyObject *exc)
         /* Try decoding a single surrogate character. If
            there are more, let the codec call us again. */
         p += start;
-        if (strlen(p) > 2 &&
-            ((p[0] & 0xf0) == 0xe0 ||
-             (p[1] & 0xc0) == 0x80 ||
-             (p[2] & 0xc0) == 0x80)) {
+        if (PyBytes_GET_SIZE(object) - start >= 3 &&
+            (p[0] & 0xf0) == 0xe0 &&
+            (p[1] & 0xc0) == 0x80 &&
+            (p[2] & 0xc0) == 0x80) {
             /* it's a three-byte code */
             ch = ((p[0] & 0x0f) << 12) + ((p[1] & 0x3f) << 6) + (p[2] & 0x3f);
             if (!Py_UNICODE_IS_SURROGATE(ch))