CVE-2025-71381 — hono
CVE-2025-71381 is a CWE-113 vulnerability in hono. A fix is available for hono — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Hono - Vary Header Injection in CORS Middleware
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-71381.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
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.
hononpmDescription
Hono before 4.10.2 (fixed in 4.10.3) contains a flaw in its CORS middleware: when the origin is not set to "*", the middleware copies the Vary header from the incoming request into the response. Because Vary is a response header that should be managed by the server, an attacker can supply arbitrary Vary values that are reflected into the response, potentially causing cache key pollution and inconsistent CORS enforcement in environments that rely on shared caches or proxies.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | hono | all versions | 4.10.3npm install hono@4.10.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for hono, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update hono to 4.10.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-71381 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2025-71381 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-71381. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-71381 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-71381 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.