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MEDIUM severity

undici vulnerable to Denial of Service via orphaned RetryHandler response bodyGHSA-pmjh-fq2x-6v4x

MEDIUMFix: nodejs/undici@3c67265

GHSA-pmjh-fq2x-6v4x is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.9) CWE-772 vulnerability in undici. A fix is available for undici — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Also known asCVE-2026-18149
Published
Updated
Affected
2 pkgs
Patched
2 / 2
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 23, 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-pmjh-fq2x-6v4x.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.4%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs29th percentile — riskier than 29% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.29%0.57%0.86%0.4%0.4%Oct 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

GHSA-pmjh-fq2x-6v4x by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

2 pkgs 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.

9Kother npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream
undicinpm
143.8Mdownloads / week

Description

undici's retry handler can leave an already-exposed response body pending forever. When a server returns a successful response that declares a Content-Length, sends only part of the body, and closes the connection, the retry handler retries the request. If the retry returns a non-retryable status such as 400, the handler forwards that new response downstream and replaces its internal response stream, but the original response body that the application still holds is never ended or destroyed. As a result calls that read that body never settle, and the configured body timeout does not fire because its timer is tied to the connection parser rather than the orphaned body. An attacker-controlled server can trigger this with two short responses without keeping a connection open, and repeated requests accumulate pending promises and streams that can exhaust application concurrency or memory. This affects undici versions from 7.11.0 up to 7.29.1 and from 8.0.0 up to 8.10.2. Users should upgrade to undici 7.29.1 or 8.10.2.

Affected Packages

2 total 2 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
📦npmundici≥ 7.11.0&&< 7.29.17.29.1npm install undici@7.29.1
📦npmundici≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.10.28.10.2npm install undici@8.10.2

Affected Products

1 product · 2 configurations
Application
undicinodejs
≥ 8.0.0 && < 8.10.2
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency
  1. Detect

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

  2. Fix

    Update undici to 7.29.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-pmjh-fq2x-6v4x is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. 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.

Red HatModerate

An attacker-controlled server can trigger a denial of service in applications using undici's retry handler. This vulnerability allows for resource exhaustion by leaving response bodies orphaned, which can lead to a degradation of service availability.

Workaround published by Red Hat
Applications utilizing undici should implement an independent request deadline and ensure the response body is explicitly destroyed upon expiration. The bodyTimeout mechanism alone is insufficient to prevent resource exhaustion in this scenario.
Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-pmjh-fq2x-6v4x (CC BY 4.0)
ProductFixed inAdvisory
Red Hat Hardened Imagesnodejs26-main-11.19.0-1.26.7.0.1.5.2.hum1RHSA-2026:54389
Red Hat Hardened Imagesnodejs24-main-11.16.0-1.24.18.1.0.2.2.hum1RHSA-2026:54438
Red Hat Hardened Imagesgrafana12-4-main-12.4.10-0.2.hum1RHSA-2026:66008

Frequently Asked Questions

### Impact undici's `RetryHandler` can leave a response body pending indefinitely. When a retried request receives a non-retryable response after a truncated one, the original `response.body` held by the application is never settled, so reads such as `response.body.text()` hang and `bodyTimeout` does not fire. A malicious server can repeat this to accumulate pending promises and streams, leading to denial of service. ### Patches Patched in undici v7.29.1 and v8.10.2. ### Workarounds Impose an independent request deadline and destroy the response body when it expires. `bodyTimeout` alone d
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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undici vulnerable to Denial of Service via orphaned…