CVE-2020-36048 Resource exhaustion in engine.io

High 7.5 Published 7 Jan 2021 Updated 4 Aug 2024

Attackers can cause denial of service via resource consumption in Engine.IO long polling transport, requiring library upgrade.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2020-36048?

CVE-2020-36048 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 7 Jan 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Engine.IO before 4.0.0 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (resource consumption) via a POST request to the long polling transport.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-36048?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including engine.io. It affects 1 product.

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`engine.io` npm	All versions	`3.6.0`
`engine.io` npm	All versions	`3.6.0`

Products include Socket Engine.io.

How do I fix CVE-2020-36048?

Upgrade engine.io to 3.6.0 or later.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2020-36048 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-36048 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as AZL-44673, GHSA-j4f2-536g-r55m.