CVE-2026-14631 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in webpack-dev-server. A fix is available for webpack-dev-server — see the affected versions and patch details below.
webpack-dev-server vulnerable to denial of service via a malformed Host or Origin header
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-2026-14631.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-14631 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 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.
webpack-dev-servernpmDescription
Impact
An unauthenticated peer that can reach the webpack-dev-server process can terminate it by sending either a normal HTTP request with a malformed Host header, or a WebSocket upgrade to the default /ws endpoint with a malformed Origin header. The malformed header triggers an uncaught exception in the host-validation path and crashes the dev server process.
Patches
Fixed in webpack-dev-server 5.2.6 by treating malformed Host and Origin header values as invalid rather than throwing (see PR #5699).
Workarounds
Keep the dev server bound to localhost (the default) and do not expose it to untrusted networks.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | webpack-dev-server | all versions | 5.2.6npm install webpack-dev-server@5.2.6 |
Affected Products
webpack-dev-serverwebpack.jsDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for webpack-dev-server, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update webpack-dev-server to 5.2.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-14631 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.
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.
webpack-dev-server is a development-time tool used to serve files during local frontend development and is not started or executed in production deployments. While the package may appear in SBOM manifests due to its presence in build-stage node_modules, the webpack-dev-server process is not running in shipped…
webpack-dev-server should never be exposed to untrusted networks. By default, it binds to localhost only. Users who run webpack-dev-server during development should ensure it remains bound to localhost and upgrade to version 5.2.6 or later, which fixes the malformed header handling.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-14631 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-14631 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.