CVE-2026-2581 — undici
MEDIUMCVE-2026-2581 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.9) CWE-770 vulnerability in undici. A fix is available for undici — see the affected versions and patch details below.
undici is vulnerable to Unbounded Memory Consumption in in Undici's DeduplicationHandler via Response Buffering leads to DoS
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-2026-2581.
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.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-2581 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
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.
undicinpmDescription
This is an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability (CWE-400) that can lead to Denial of Service (DoS).
In vulnerable Undici versions, when interceptors.deduplicate() is enabled, response data for deduplicated requests could be accumulated in memory for downstream handlers. An attacker-controlled or untrusted upstream endpoint can exploit this with large/chunked responses and concurrent identical requests, causing high memory usage and potential OOM process termination.
Impacted users are applications that use Undici’s deduplication interceptor against endpoints that may produce large or long-lived response bodies.
PatchesThe issue has been patched by changing deduplication behavior to stream response chunks to downstream handlers as they arrive (instead of full-body accumulation), and by preventing late deduplication when body streaming has already started.
Users should upgrade to the first official Undici (and Node.js, where applicable) releases that include this patch.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | undici | ≥ 7.17.0&&< 7.24.0 | 7.24.0npm install undici@7.24.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for undici, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update undici to 7.24.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-2581 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-2026-2581 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-2581. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | nodejs24-1:24.14.1-2.el10_1 | RHSA-2026:7675 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | nodejs:24-8100020260408131901.6d880403 | RHSA-2026:7670 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | nodejs:24-9070020260402152654.rhel9 | RHSA-2026:7350 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-2581 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-2581 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.