GHSA-vf2m-468p-8v99

When responseType: 'stream' is used, Axios returns the response stream without enforcing maxContentLength. This bypasses configured response-size limits and allows unbounded downstream consumption.

Details

In lib/adapters/http.js: - 786-789: for responseType === 'stream', Axios immediately settles with the stream. - 797-810: maxContentLength enforcement exists only in the non-stream buffering branch.

So callers may set maxContentLength and still receive/read arbitrarily large streamed responses.

PoC

Environment: - Axios main at commit f7a4ee2 - Node v24.2.0

Steps:

Start an HTTP server that returns a 2 MiB response body.
Call Axios with:
- adapter: 'http'
- responseType: 'stream'
- maxContentLength: 1024
Read the returned stream fully.

Observed: - Success; full 2097152 bytes readable.

Control check: - Same endpoint with responseType: 'text' and same maxContentLength: rejected with maxContentLength size of 1024 exceeded.

Impact

Type: DoS / unbounded response processing. Impacted: Node.js applications relying on maxContentLength as a safety boundary while using streamed Axios responses.

Database specific

{
    "github_reviewed": true,
    "github_reviewed_at": "2026-05-05T00:26:57Z",
    "cwe_ids": [
        "CWE-770"
    ],
    "severity": "MODERATE",
    "nvd_published_at": "2026-04-24T18:16:30Z"
}

References

Affected packages

npm / axios

Package

Name: axios; View open source insights on deps.dev
Purl: pkg:npm/axios

Affected ranges

Type: SEMVER
Events: Introduced

1.0.0

Fixed

1.15.1

Database specific

source

"https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/05/GHSA-vf2m-468p-8v99/GHSA-vf2m-468p-8v99.json"

npm / axios

Package

Name: axios; View open source insights on deps.dev
Purl: pkg:npm/axios

Affected ranges

Type: SEMVER
Events: Introduced

0Unknown introduced version / All previous versions are affected

Fixed

0.31.1

Database specific

source

"https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/05/GHSA-vf2m-468p-8v99/GHSA-vf2m-468p-8v99.json"

last_known_affected_version_range

"<= 0.31.0"