Hackney has CRLF / header injection in WebSocket upgrade requestGHSA-f9vr-g2g2-x9fg
Fix: benoitc/hackney@52310caGHSA-f9vr-g2g2-x9fg is a CWE-93 vulnerability in hackney. A fix is available for hackney — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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 GHSA-f9vr-g2g2-x9fg.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
Real-World Exposure
hackneyReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Hex packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
CRLF injection in hackney's WebSocket upgrade request builder (src/hackney_ws.erl). init/1 copies the host, path, headers, and protocols options from the caller-supplied opts map verbatim into #ws_data{}, and do_handshake/1 splices them directly into the raw HTTP/1.1 upgrade request by binary concatenation with no \r\n or \0 stripping. A caller that passes any of these fields from untrusted input can inject arbitrary header lines into the outbound upgrade request.
Details
do_handshake/1 builds the upgrade request at several concatenation sites:
- Host header (lines 583–590): the host binary is written straight into
Host: <host>:<port>\r\n. - Sec-WebSocket-Protocol (lines 601–602): protocol tokens are joined with
,and appended as a header line. - Extra headers (line 606): caller-supplied
{Name, Value}tuples are concatenated asName: Value\r\nwith no sanitization of either component. - Request path (line 611): the path is interpolated into the
GET <path> HTTP/1.1\r\nrequest line.
None of these sites reject \r, \n, or \0. A header value like <<"benign\r\nAuthorization: Bearer token">> produces two distinct header lines on the wire. A path with an embedded \r\n rewrites the request line itself.
PoC
- Call
:hackney_ws.start_link/1withheaders: [{"X-User", "v\r\nAuthorization: Bearer attacker"}]. - Connect to a raw TCP listener and capture the bytes hackney writes.
- The request contains a standalone
Authorization: Bearer attackerline that the upstream WebSocket server parses as a legitimate header.
Impact
Header injection / request smuggling in outbound WebSocket upgrades. Affects hackney 2.0.0 through 4.0.0 wherever host, path, headers, or protocols options are populated from network or user input. Consequences include forging authentication headers toward the upstream server, log and cache poisoning, and request smuggling through intermediary proxies. CVSS v4.0: 6.9 (MEDIUM).
Resources
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💧Hex | hackney | ≥ 2.0.0&&< 4.0.1 | 4.0.1mix deps.update hackney |
Affected Products
hackneybenoitcDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for hackney, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update hackney to 4.0.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-f9vr-g2g2-x9fg 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-f9vr-g2g2-x9fg in your dependencies?
Find it across Hex, including transitive dependencies.