CVE-2026-1526

ADVISORY - github

Summary

Description

The undici WebSocket client is vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack via unbounded memory consumption during permessage-deflate decompression. When a WebSocket connection negotiates the permessage-deflate extension, the client decompresses incoming compressed frames without enforcing any limit on the decompressed data size. A malicious WebSocket server can send a small compressed frame (a "decompression bomb") that expands to an extremely large size in memory, causing the Node.js process to exhaust available memory and crash or become unresponsive.

The vulnerability exists in the PerMessageDeflate.decompress() method, which accumulates all decompressed chunks in memory and concatenates them into a single Buffer without checking whether the total size exceeds a safe threshold.

Impact

  • Remote denial of service against any Node.js application using undici's WebSocket client
  • A single compressed WebSocket frame of ~6 MB can decompress to ~1 GB or more
  • Memory exhaustion occurs in native/external memory, bypassing V8 heap limits
  • No application-level mitigation is possible as decompression occurs before message delivery

Patches

Users should upgrade to fixed versions.

Workarounds

No workaround are possible.

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

ADVISORY - nist

Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)

ADVISORY - github

Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)

ADVISORY - redhat

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling


GitHub

CREATED

UPDATED

EXPLOITABILITY SCORE

3.9

EXPLOITS FOUND
-
COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATION (CWE)

CVSS SCORE

7.5high
PackageTypeOS NameOS VersionAffected RangesFix Versions
undicinpm--<6.24.06.24.0
undicinpm-->=7.0.0,<7.24.07.24.0

CVSS:3 Severity and metrics

The CVSS metrics represent different qualitative aspects of a vulnerability that impact the overall score, as defined by the CVSS Specification.

The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack, but the attack is limited at the protocol level to a logically adjacent topology. This can mean an attack must be launched from the same shared physical (e.g., Bluetooth or IEEE 802.11) or logical (e.g., local IP subnet) network, or from within a secure or otherwise limited administrative domain (e.g., MPLS, secure VPN to an administrative network zone). One example of an Adjacent attack would be an ARP (IPv4) or neighbor discovery (IPv6) flood leading to a denial of service on the local LAN segment (e.g., CVE-2013-6014).

Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success when attacking the vulnerable component.

The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files of the vulnerable system to carry out an attack.

The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any user.

An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.

There is no loss of confidentiality.

There is no loss of trust or accuracy within the impacted component.

There is a total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.

NIST

CREATED

UPDATED

ADVISORY IDCVE-2026-1526
EXPLOITABILITY SCORE

3.9

EXPLOITS FOUND
-
COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATION (CWE)

CVSS SCORE

7.5high

Debian

CREATED

UPDATED

ADVISORY IDCVE-2026-1526
EXPLOITABILITY SCORE

-

EXPLOITS FOUND
-
COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATION (CWE)-
RATING UNAVAILABLE FROM ADVISORY

Ubuntu

CREATED

UPDATED

ADVISORY IDCVE-2026-1526
EXPLOITABILITY SCORE

-

EXPLOITS FOUND
-
COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATION (CWE)-

CVSS SCORE

N/Amedium

Red Hat

CREATED

UPDATED

ADVISORY IDCVE-2026-1526
EXPLOITABILITY SCORE

3.9

EXPLOITS FOUND
-
COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATION (CWE)

CVSS SCORE

7.5high