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MEDIUM severity

i18next-locize-backend has URL Injection via Unsanitized Path ParametersGHSA-mgcp-mfp8-3q45

MEDIUMFix: locize/i18next-locize-backend@8f81ad4

GHSA-mgcp-mfp8-3q45 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Path Traversal vulnerability in i18next-locize-backend. A fix is available for i18next-locize-backend — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Also known asCVE-2026-41885
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 26, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

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 GHSA-mgcp-mfp8-3q45.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.2%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk-0.11%
Lower risk than most CVEs13th percentile — riskier than 13% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.28%0.55%0.83%0.1%0.2%Jun 26Sep 26Oct 26

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

1 pkg affected

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.

78other npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream
i18next-locize-backendnpm
85Kdownloads / week

Description

Summary

Versions of i18next-locize-backend prior to 9.0.2 interpolate lng, ns, projectId, and version directly into the configured loadPath / privatePath / addPath / updatePath / getLanguagesPath URL templates with no path-component validation and no encoding. When an application exposes any of these values to user-controlled input (?lng= / ?ns= query parameters via i18next-browser-languagedetector, cookies, request headers, or a URL-derived projectId), a crafted value can change the structure of the outgoing request URL.

Affected call sites in lib/index.js (pre-patch): the interpolate() helper is used at the five URL-build sites — _readAny/read (line 415 for private, 426 for public), getLanguages (lines 271 and 296), and writePage (lines 616 and 622) for the missing-key and update POST paths. The helper interpolate in lib/utils.js substitutes raw values with no encoding.

Impact

An attacker who can influence lng, ns, projectId, or version can:

  • Path traversal — lng = '../../admin' against https://api.locize.app/{{projectId}}/{{version}}/{{lng}}/{{ns}} changes the request URL path segment that reaches the locize CDN / API.
  • Query-string injection — lng = 'en?x=y' appends an attacker-chosen query to the URL.
  • Fragment truncation — lng = 'en#x' silently truncates the path in browser fetches.
  • URL-encoded bypass — lng = 'en%2F..' leverages server-side decoding to reintroduce /...

The worst-case concrete impact is loading an unintended translation resource (potentially causing wrong content to render) and, when a custom loadPath is configured against an internal / file-scheme URL, SSRF or arbitrary-file read on the host running the backend.

Additionally, the pre-patch interpolate() function read data[key] without excluding prototype-chain properties — under prototype-pollution conditions in the same process, that path could pull values from Object.prototype into the URL.

Related fixes shipped in 9.0.2

  • The defaults() helper replaces for...in iteration with Object.keys() plus an explicit prototype-key guard so a polluted Object.prototype cannot leak into the merged options object.
  • New utils.interpolateUrl / isSafeUrlSegment / sanitizeLogValue / redactUrlCredentials helpers mirror the pattern shipped in [email protected] (see its advisory GHSA-q89c-q3h5-w34g).

Affected versions

All versions of i18next-locize-backend prior to 9.0.2.

Patch

Fixed in 9.0.2. lib/index.js now uses interpolateUrl() at every URL-build site and returns an error callback (or silently drops the queued write for writePage) when any interpolated value fails the safety check. Legitimate i18next language-code shapes (BCP-47, en_US, zh-Hant-HK, my-custom.ns, +-joined multi-language values) all pass.

Workarounds

No workaround short of upgrading. If you cannot upgrade immediately, sanitise lng / ns / projectId / version at your application boundary before passing them through to i18next — reject values containing .., /, \, ?, #, %, whitespace, control characters, and cap the length.

Credits

Discovered via an internal security audit of the i18next / locize ecosystem.

References

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
📦npmi18next-locize-backendall versions9.0.2npm install i18next-locize-backend@9.0.2

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency
  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for i18next-locize-backend, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update i18next-locize-backend to 9.0.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-mgcp-mfp8-3q45 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Summary Versions of `i18next-locize-backend` prior to 9.0.2 interpolate `lng`, `ns`, `projectId`, and `version` directly into the configured `loadPath` / `privatePath` / `addPath` / `updatePath` / `getLanguagesPath` URL templates with no path-component validation and no encoding. When an application exposes any of these values to user-controlled input (`?lng=` / `?ns=` query parameters via `i18next-browser-languagedetector`, cookies, request headers, or a URL-derived `projectId`), a crafted value can change the structure of the outgoing request URL. Affected call sites in `lib/index.js`
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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