CVE-2026-44579 — next
HIGHCVE-2026-44579 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in next. A fix is available for next — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Next.js: Denial of Service via connection exhaustion in applications using Cache Components
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-2026-44579.
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-2026-44579 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 377,636 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.
nextnpmDescription
Impact
Applications using Partial Prerendering through the Cache Components feature can be vulnerable to connection exhaustion through crafted POST requests to a server action. In affected configurations, a malicious request can trigger a request-body handling deadlock that leaves connections open for an extended period, consuming file descriptors and server capacity until legitimate users are denied service.
Fix
We now treat the header used for resuming Partial Prerendered requests as an internal-only header and strip it from untrusted incoming requests. This header should never be accepted directly from external clients.
Workarounds
If you cannot upgrade immediately, block requests that would be handled by Next.js if they contain the Next-Resume header at the edge.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | next | ≥ 15.0.0&&< 15.5.16 | 15.5.16npm install next@15.5.16 |
| 📦npm | next | ≥ 16.0.0&&< 16.2.5 | 16.2.5npm install next@16.2.5 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for next, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update next to 15.5.16 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-44579 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-2026-44579 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-44579. 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.
This vulnerability is rated as Important as Next.js applications configured with Partial Prerendering and Cache Components are susceptible to a remote denial of service. An unauthenticated attacker can exhaust server connections by sending specially crafted POST requests, leading to a complete disruption of service…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Streams for Apache Kafka 2.9.4 | next | RHSA-2026:34608 |
| Streams for Apache Kafka 3.2.1 | next | RHSA-2026:54435 |
| Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer 1.3 | rhtas/rekor-search-ui-rhel9:1783958622 | RHSA-2026:40974 |
| Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer 1.4 | rhtas/rekor-search-ui-rhel9:1783327185 | RHSA-2026:37272 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-44579 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-44579 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.