CVE-2020-28168 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.9) Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in axios. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for axios — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Axios vulnerable to Server-Side Request Forgery
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-28168 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,987 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
axiosnpmDescription
Axios NPM package 0.21.0 contains a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability where an attacker is able to bypass a proxy by providing a URL that responds with a redirect to a restricted host or IP address.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | axios | all versions | 0.21.1npm install axios@0.21.1 |
Affected Products
axiosaxiossinec inssiemensResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for axios, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update axios to 0.21.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-28168 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Restrict outbound requests from the affected component to an allowlist of hosts, block access to link-local and internal address ranges at the network layer, and require authentication on internal services so a forged request cannot reach them unauthenticated.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Whilst in OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) the openshift4/ose-console container does include the vulnerable axios library, it does not use the vulnerable proxy functionality. Additionally, the console is behind OpenShift OAuth restricting access to authenticated users only and as such has been marked as Low impact.…
A mitigation exists where by catching the error code returned by axios.request, it can be identified that there is a redirect. By updating the old request config with the new redirect path, the request can then be repeated with the traffic routed through the proxy. As identified by Marika in this GitHub comment: https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/3369#issuecomment-721748989.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2020-28168 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-28168 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.