CVE-2026-48125 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ua-parser-js. A fix is available for ua-parser-js — see the affected versions and patch details below.
UAParser.js: Unbounded `Sec-CH-UA-Model` parsing can trigger ReDoS in `withClientHints()`
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-48125.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
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.
ua-parser-jsnpmDescription
Summary
A regular expression denial-of-service (ReDoS) vulnerability has been discovered in ua-parser-js when using the Client Hints API. By sending a crafted Sec-CH-UA-Model header to an application that calls UAParser(headers).withClientHints(), an attacker can cause the parser to spend excessive CPU time due to catastrophic backtracking in the device regex:
/ ([\w ]+) miui\/v?\d/i
Unlike when using the User-Agent value, which has a hard limit of UA_MAX_LENGTH = 500, when using Client Hints, values are copied without a length limit before being passed into regex parsing.
PoC
const { UAParser } = require('ua-parser-js');
const headers = {
'sec-ch-ua-platform': '"Android"',
'sec-ch-ua-mobile': '?1',
'sec-ch-ua-model': '"' + 'A '.repeat(25000) + '"'
};
const t0 = process.hrtime.bigint();
UAParser(headers).withClientHints();
const ms = Number(process.hrtime.bigint() - t0) / 1e6;
if (ms > 100) {
console.log('Potential ReDoS');
}
Impact
This vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to trigger a denial-of-service condition in any server-side application that uses UAParser(headers).withClientHints(). A single request with a ~32,000-character model value can consume over 400ms of CPU time, with parsing time growing polynomially with input length. The impact is availability only, there is no confidentiality or integrity impact.
Affected Versions
ua-parser-js versions >=2.0.1, <=2.0.9 are affected. The withClientHints() API is not present in version 0.7.x or 1.x.
Patches
A patch has been released to fix the vulnerable regular expression and limit the Client Hints input. Users should update to version 2.0.10 or later.
References
Credits
Thanks to @sondt99, who first reported the issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | ua-parser-js | ≥ 2.0.1&&< 2.0.10 | 2.0.10npm install ua-parser-js@2.0.10 |
Affected Products
ua-parser-jsua-parser-js_projectDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for ua-parser-js, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update ua-parser-js to 2.0.10 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-48125 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
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.
The `Sec-CH-UA-Model` header is part of the User-Agent Client Hints infrastructure. Mobile browsers send this hint to inform servers about the specific device model. Servers use the model name to tailor content, apply device-specific optimizations, or log analytics about which hardware models access a service. A…
If you are managing web servers or Node.js applications that process user-agent information, you can defend against this attack vector using the following approaches: * Apply header length restrictions (reverse proxy, WAF, application) * Opt-out of Client Hints, avoid parsing the Sec-CH-UA-Model with ua-parser-js npm package Upgrading to version 2.0.10+ mitigates this issue, by setting a maximum cap size of UA_MAX_LENGTH = 500.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-48125 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-48125 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.