body-parser vulnerable to denial of service when url encoding is enabledGHSA-qwcr-r2fm-qrc7
HIGHFix: expressjs/body-parser@b2695c4GHSA-qwcr-r2fm-qrc7 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-405 vulnerability in body-parser. A fix is available for body-parser — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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 GHSA-qwcr-r2fm-qrc7.
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.
body-parsernpmDescription
body-parser is Node.js body parsing middleware. body-parser <1.20.3 is vulnerable to denial of service when url encoding is enabled. A malicious actor using a specially crafted payload could flood the server with a large number of requests, resulting in denial of service. This issue is patched in 1.20.3.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | body-parser | all versions | 1.20.3npm install body-parser@1.20.3 |
Affected Products
body-parseropenjsfDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for body-parser, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update body-parser to 1.20.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-qwcr-r2fm-qrc7 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.
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-qwcr-r2fm-qrc7 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery 1 for RHEL 9 | discovery/discovery-server-rhel9:1.12.0-1 | RHSA-2025:1249 |
| NETWORK-OBSERVABILITY-1.7.0-RHEL-9 | network-observability/network-observability-cli-rhel9:v1.7.0-67 | RHSA-2024:8014 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security 4.4 | advanced-cluster-security/rhacs-main-rhel8:4.4.6-2 | RHSA-2024:9583 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security 4.5 | advanced-cluster-security/rhacs-main-rhel8:4.5.5-3 | RHSA-2024:10186 |
| Red Hat Developer Hub 1.3 on RHEL 9 | rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9:1.3-124 | RHBA-2024:9054 |
| Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Containers 1.8 | rhmtc/openshift-migration-ui-rhel8:v1.8.5-7 | RHSA-2024:10906 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.17 | openshift4/nmstate-console-plugin-rhel9:v4.17.0-202501301204.p0.gcffdc60.assembly.stream.el9 | RHSA-2025:0875 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.18 | openshift4/ingress-node-firewall-rhel9:v4.18.0-202501230001.p0.g1e43b4c.assembly.stream.el9 | RHSA-2024:6121 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-qwcr-r2fm-qrc7 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.