CVE-2026-29045 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-177 vulnerability in hono. A fix is available for hono — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Hono: Arbitrary file access via serveStatic vulnerability
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-2026-29045.
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-2026-29045 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.
hononpmDescription
Summary
When using serveStatic together with route-based middleware protections (e.g. app.use('/admin/*', ...)), inconsistent URL decoding allowed protected static resources to be accessed without authorization.
The router used decodeURI, while serveStatic used decodeURIComponent. This mismatch allowed paths containing encoded slashes (%2F) to bypass middleware protections while still resolving to the intended filesystem path.
Details
The routing layer preserved %2F as a literal string, while serveStatic decoded it into / before resolving the file path.
Example:
Request: /admin%2Fsecret.html
- Router sees:
/admin%2Fsecret.html→ does not match/admin/* - Static handler resolves:
/admin/secret.html
As a result, static files under the configured static root could be served without triggering route-based protections.
This only affects applications that both:
- Protect subpaths using route-based middleware, and
- Serve files from the same static root using
serveStatic.
This does not allow access outside the static root and is not a path traversal vulnerability.
Impact
An unauthenticated attacker could bypass route-based authorization for protected static resources by supplying paths containing encoded slashes.
Applications relying solely on route-based middleware to protect static subpaths may have exposed those resources.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | hono | all versions | 4.12.4npm install hono@4.12.4 |
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 4.12.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-29045 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-2026-29045 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-29045. 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-2026-29045 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-29045 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.