GHSA-6663-c963-2gqg CVE-2016-10542

DoS due to excessively large websocket message in ws

High npm

Severity: High; The publisher's own rating, not a CVSS score
Exploit chance (EPSS): 7.42%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 94.45% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Fix: 1.1.1; Upgrade ws to this version or later

Description

Affected versions of ws do not appropriately limit the size of incoming websocket payloads, which may result in a denial of service condition when the node process crashes after receiving a large payload.

Recommendation

Update to version 1.1.1 or later. Alternatively, set the maxpayload option for the ws server to a value smaller than 256MB.

Affected versions

npm

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
ws	`< 1.1.1`	`1.1.1`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

ws npm → `1.1.1`

npm

npm install ws@1.1.1

yarn

yarn add ws@1.1.1

pnpm

pnpm add ws@1.1.1

Weakness

CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.
Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
Implementation: Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.

References

Advisories

Timeline

Feb 18, 2019 Published
Nov 8, 2023 Last updated by the source
Nov 1, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-96hv-2xvq-fx4p ws: Memory exhaustion DoS from tiny fragments and data chunks	High	Also affects ws
GHSA-58qx-3vcg-4xpx ws: Uninitialized memory disclosure	High	Also affects ws
GHSA-3h5v-q93c-6h6q ws affected by a DoS when handling a request with many HTTP headers	High	Also affects ws
GHSA-6fc8-4gx4-v693 ReDoS in Sec-Websocket-Protocol header	Medium	Also affects ws
GHSA-5v72-xg48-5rpm Denial of Service in ws	High	Also affects ws
GHSA-2mhh-w6q8-5hxw Remote Memory Disclosure in ws	Low	Also affects ws
GHSA-cggf-277g-3q54 pypdf has possible large memory usage when parsing page tree	High	Same weakness, CWE-400
GHSA-3g3m-2fjr-6pw4 Glob: AbortSignal cancellation bypass allows post-timeout filesystem traversal	Medium	Same weakness, CWE-400

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