CVE-2026-44496 Axios: Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) via Cookie Name Injection
An attacker can cause browser tab freezing in Axios by injecting regex metacharacters into the XSRF cookie name, leading to client-side denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-44496?
CVE-2026-44496 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in axios, published on 11 Jun 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. Axios versions before 0.32.0 on the 0.x line and before 1.16.0 on the 1.x line build a regular expression from the configured XSRF cookie name without escaping regex metacharacters. In standard browser environments, an attacker who can influence the cookie name passed to axios can cause expensive regex backtracking while axios reads document.cookie. The practical impact is client-side availability degradation, such as freezing the affected browser tab while axios prepares a request. The issue does not affect ordinary Node.js HTTP adapter usage, React Native, or web workers, where axios does not read document.cookie. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.32.0 and 1.16.0.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-44496?
4 open source packages ship an affected version, including axios. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
axios npm | All versions | 0.32.0 |
axios npm | All versions | 0.32.0 |
axios npm | From 1.0.0 | 1.16.0 |
axios npm | From 1.0.0 | 1.16.0 |
Products include Axios Axios.
How do I fix CVE-2026-44496?
Upgrade axios to a fixed version for your release line: 0.32.0 or 1.16.0.
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-2026-44496 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-44496 exists.
Other vulnerabilities in axios
- CVE-2026-44494 Axios: Full Man-in-the-Middle via Prototype Pollution Gadget in `config.proxy`
- CVE-2026-44492 axios's shouldBypassProxy does not recognize IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses, allowing NO_PROXY bypass (incomplete fix for CVE-2025-62718)
- CVE-2026-67320 axios before 0.33.0 Prototype Pollution via Node HTTP adapter
- CVE-2026-44487 Axios: Proxy-Authorization Credential Leak to Origin Server Across HTTP-to-HTTPS Redirect in Axios Node.js HTTP Adapter
- CVE-2025-27152 Possible SSRF and Credential Leakage via Absolute URL in axios Requests
Sources
Also known as CLEANSTART-2026-UY90963, CLSA-2026-1785117458, CLSA-2026-1793180826, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-44496, ECHO-2e2e-8d9d-ff19, GHSA-hfxv-24rg-xrqf and 27 more.