GHSA-92vj-g62v-jqhh CVE-2025-59139
Hono has Body Limit Middleware Bypass
Medium
npm
- Severity
- 5.3 / 10
- Medium · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 0.45%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 38.80% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
- Fix
4.9.7- Upgrade hono to this version or later
Description
Summary
A flaw in the bodyLimit middleware could allow bypassing the configured request body size limit when conflicting HTTP headers were present.
Details
The middleware previously prioritized the Content-Length header even when a Transfer-Encoding: chunked header was also included. According to the HTTP specification, Content-Length must be ignored in such cases. This discrepancy could allow oversized request bodies to bypass the configured limit.
Most standards-compliant runtimes and reverse proxies may reject such malformed requests with 400 Bad Request, so the practical impact depends on the runtime and deployment environment.
Impact
If body size limits are used as a safeguard against large or malicious requests, this flaw could allow attackers to send oversized request bodies. The primary risk is denial of service (DoS) due to excessive memory or CPU consumption when handling very large requests.
Resolution
The implementation has been updated to align with the HTTP specification, ensuring that Transfer-Encoding takes precedence over Content-Length. The issue is fixed in Hono v4.9.7, and all users should upgrade immediately.
Affected versions
npm
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| hono | < 4.9.7 |
4.9.7 |
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.
hono npm → 4.9.7
- npm
npm install hono@4.9.7- yarn
yarn add hono@4.9.7- pnpm
pnpm add hono@4.9.7
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 5.3
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Low
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.
CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any intended restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated.
How to prevent it
- Requirements: Clearly specify the minimum and maximum expectations for capabilities, and dictate which behaviors are acceptable when resource allocation reaches limits.
- Architecture and Design: Limit the amount of resources that are accessible to unprivileged users. Set per-user limits for resources. Allow the system administrator to define these limits. Be careful to avoid CWE-410.
- 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, and it will help the administrator to identify who is committing the abuse. 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.
- Implementation: Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
- Architecture and Design: For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
- 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, typically by using increasing time delays 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 can be difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply requires more resources on the part of the attacker.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
- Architecture and Design, Implementation: If the program must fail, ensure that it fails gracefully (fails closed). There may be a temptation to simply let the program fail poorly in cases such as low memory conditions, but an attacker may be able to assert control before the software has fully exited. Alternately, an uncontrolled failure could cause cascading problems with other downstream components; for example, the program could send a signal to a downstream process so the process immediately knows that a problem has occurred and has a better chance of recovery. Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.
- Operation, Architecture and Design: Use quotas or other resource-limiting settings provided by the operating system or environment. For example, when managing system resources in POSIX, setrlimit() can be used to set limits for certain types of resources, and getrlimit() can determine how many resources are available. However, these functions are not available on all operating systems. When the current levels get close to the maximum that is defined for the application (see CWE-770), then limit the allocation of further resources to privileged users; alternately, begin releasing resources for less-privileged users. While this mitigation may protect the system from attack, it will not necessarily stop attackers from adversely impacting other users. Ensure that the application performs the appropriate error checks and error handling in case resources become unavailable (CWE-703).
References
Advisories
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-5r4p-p66f-jhc7 Hono: `serveStatic` decodes the request path a second time, leading to bypass of middleware on static paths | Medium | Also affects hono |
| GHSA-hxh3-vqpv-xpqv hono/jsx renders plain strings unescaped in boundary components, leading to XSS | Low | Also affects hono |
| GHSA-gqvv-2mrq-wpjv Hono: Incomplete fix for CVE-2026-39408: `toSSG()` still writes files outside the output directory | Medium | Also affects hono |
| GHSA-g6gw-c38x-mqfc Hono: Unbounded dot-notation nesting in `parseBody()` can cause memory exhaustion | Medium | Also affects hono |
| GHSA-crvj-82cr-hjcx Hono: Query parser reads parameters after the URL fragment, causing cache-key and proxy interpretation differentials | Medium | Also affects hono |
| GHSA-f23p-vx2j-j53r Hono: `memo()` retains SSR output across requests, leading to cross-user data disclosure | Medium | Also affects hono |
| GHSA-79qm-7rj5-m7r9 Hono: Proxy Helper does not remove response headers listed in the `Connection` header | Low | Also affects hono |
| GHSA-54fx-42gc-7vw4 Hono: Algorithmic Complexity DoS in Language Middleware | Medium | Also affects hono |
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