GHSA-8xcm-r25x-g524 CVE-2026-16728
undici vulnerable to downstream response desynchronization via retry interceptor
- Severity
- 4.8 / 10
- Medium · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 0.29%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 21.38% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-444 Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests ('HTTP Request/Response Smuggling')
- Fix
6.28.0- Upgrade undici to this version or later
Description
Impact
Undici's interceptors.retry() can deliver a response whose body length does not match the Content-Length header exposed to the application after a retry or resume of a partial response. Applications that use interceptors.retry() and forward upstream response headers and bodies downstream, for example proxy or gateway applications, may emit an invalid HTTP response with a stale Content-Length header. This can lead to downstream response desynchronization, connection hangs, or response corruption in clients or intermediaries that rely on the forwarded framing metadata.
A malicious or faulty upstream can respond to a range request with a 206 Partial Content response such as:
Content-Range: bytes 0-99/300
Content-Length: 300
and then send only 99 bytes before closing the socket. interceptors.retry() can then retry with Range: bytes=99-99, receive the final byte, and deliver a 100-byte body to the application while the response headers still contain Content-Length: 300 from the first response.
The bug requires interceptors.retry() to be enabled, an upstream that returns a partial response with a mismatched framing header, and a downstream forwarder that does not remove or recalculate Content-Length.
Patches
Patched in undici v6.28.0, v7.29.0, and v8.9.0. Users should upgrade to one of these versions or later.
Workarounds
- Disable
interceptors.retry()for untrusted upstreams. - Remove or recalculate
Content-Lengthbefore forwarding a response body assembled or transformed by Undici.
Affected versions
npm
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| undici | < 6.28.0 |
6.28.0 |
| undici | >= 7.0.0, < 7.29.0 |
7.29.0 |
| undici | >= 8.0.0, < 8.9.0 |
8.9.0 |
| undici | < 6.28.0 |
6.28.0 |
| undici | >= 7.0.0, < 7.29.0 |
7.29.0 |
| undici | >= 8.0.0, < 8.9.0 |
8.9.0 |
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.
undici npm → 6.28.0
- npm
npm install undici@6.28.0- yarn
yarn add undici@6.28.0- pnpm
pnpm add undici@6.28.0
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 4.8
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- High
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- Low
- Integrity
- Low
- Availability
- None
Weakness
CWE-444: Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests ('HTTP Request/Response Smuggling')
The product acts as an intermediary HTTP agent (such as a proxy or firewall) in the data flow between two entities such as a client and server, but it does not interpret malformed HTTP requests or responses in ways that are consistent with how the messages will be processed by those entities that are at the ultimate destination.
How to prevent it
- Implementation: Use a web server that employs a strict HTTP parsing procedure, such as Apache [REF-433].
- Implementation: Use only SSL communication.
- Implementation: Terminate the client session after each request.
- System Configuration: Turn all pages to non-cacheable.
References
Advisories
Fixes and patches
- github.com/nodejs/undici/commit/1b5a5312c3a7d7a30c31bf0d000b39a8a2531e1c
- github.com/nodejs/undici/commit/2b3f749336d356bbbc50192f87f6cf7bc714721a
- github.com/nodejs/undici/commit/4a9dafb16ff43880cf590e6d9c2aeee25fbff6d7
- github.com/nodejs/undici/commit/4fd5a0c61e627f928b7003adc4ffe1e55ec63420
- github.com/nodejs/undici/commit/cba3a52ac2e7abcc4e656d82af8579ea82c2bb9e
- github.com/nodejs/undici/commit/e11a68ed4ff345c79402476f7a00d473443e318d
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-55wc-3pg8-jfw6 undici vulnerable to Denial of Service via unhandled exception in the decompress interceptor | High | Also affects undici |
| GHSA-qrxm-fqhp-jwvm undici vulnerable to Denial of Service via TLS 1.2 certificate-changing renegotiation | High | Also affects undici |
| GHSA-9fm3-97px-rjf6 undici WebSocket client vulnerable to Denial of Service via unbounded automatic PONG buffering | High | Also affects undici |
| GHSA-4qv8-2p9j-2685 undici vulnerable to Denial of Service via unbounded memory in the EventSource parser | High | Also affects undici |
| GHSA-xjj6-f33q-929c undici vulnerable to Denial of Service via unhandled error on excessive content-encodings | High | Also affects undici |
| GHSA-f72v-6w45-q472 undici vulnerable to Subresource Integrity bypass via non-lowercase algorithm tokens | High | Also affects undici |
| GHSA-4w7w-5xrc-9h26 undici vulnerable to cache poisoning and cross-user disclosure via cross-origin redirects | Critical | Also affects undici |
| GHSA-2m5v-pch6-74hx undici vulnerable to TLS certificate validation bypass via dropped tls options in Agent | Critical | Also affects undici |
Credits: UlisesGascon, mcollina, samuel871211
MergeHarbor checks every repository's dependencies against this database, ranks what matters by exploitability and reachability, routes it to the owning team and opens the fix pull request.
Check your repos with MergeHarbor