body-parser vulnerable to denial of service when invalid limit value silently disables size enforcement
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- High
- Impact type
- Denial of service
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · None · High
- Fix status
- Partial Red Hat: 35 without a fix
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · NVD. Fix status from CNA, GitHub and Red Hat. Impact type from CWE-770.
Summary
Impact: In body-parser versions prior to 1.20.6 (1.x line) and 2.3.0 (2.x line), when the parser is configured with an invalid limit option value such as an unparseable string or NaN, bytes.parse returns null and the request body size check is silently skipped. Applications that rely on limit as their primary safeguard against oversized request bodies will accept arbitrarily large payloads, leading to excessive memory and CPU usage and denial of service. Patches: This issue is fixed in body-parser 1.20.6 and 2.3.0. After the fix, invalid limit values throw a clear error at parser construction time instead of silently disabling enforcement, while null and undefined continue to fall back to the default limit of 100kb. Workarounds: Validate the limit value before passing it to body-parser. For example, parse the value at startup and reject any configuration where the result is null or a non-finite number.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Partial
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| body-parser | body-parser | before 1.20.6; 2.0.0 to before 2.3.0 | 1.20.6, 2.3.0 | Patch available | CNA |
| — | body-parser (npm) | before 1.20.6 | 1.20.6 | Patch available | GHSA-v422-hmwv-36x6 |
| — | body-parser (npm) | 2.0.0 to before 2.3.0 | 2.3.0 | Patch available | GHSA-v422-hmwv-36x6 |
- body-parser Vendorbody-parser Affected before 1.20.6; 2.0.0 to before 2.3.0 Fixed in 1.20.6, 2.3.0 Patch available CNA
- body-parser (npm) Vendor— Affected before 1.20.6 Fixed in 1.20.6 Patch available GHSA-v422-hmwv-36x6
- body-parser (npm) Vendor— Affected 2.0.0 to before 2.3.0 Fixed in 2.3.0 Patch available GHSA-v422-hmwv-36x6
Remediation
- Fix · CNA body-parser (body-parser) Fixed in 1.20.6, 2.3.0
- Fix · GHSA-v422-hmwv-36x6 body-parser (npm) Fixed in 1.20.6 Advisory →
- Fix · GHSA-v422-hmwv-36x6 body-parser (npm) Fixed in 2.3.0 Advisory →
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
| Product | Status | Plan or fix |
|---|---|---|
| Confidential Compute Attestation | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Cryostat 4 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Gatekeeper 3 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Migration Toolkit for Applications 8 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Migration Toolkit for Containers | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Node HealthCheck Operator | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| OpenShift Lightspeed | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| OpenShift Pipelines | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| OpenShift Serverless | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| OpenShift Service Mesh 3 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat AMQ Broker 7 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Build of Podman Desktop | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Connectivity Link 1 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Data Grid 8 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Developer Hub 1 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Discovery 2 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI) 3 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Quay 3 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Satellite 6 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Trusted Profile Analyzer | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat build of Apache Camel - HawtIO 4 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat build of Apache Camel for Spring Boot 4 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Self-service automation portal 2 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
Not affected: 1 product
- Red Hat Hardened Images
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-12590
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-v422-hmwv-36x6
- 2026-10-27 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
- 2026-10-30 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
References
Advisory 2
Other 7
- https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser/pull/698
- https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser/pull/741
- https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser/commit/2322e111cc321413ec2b7b76d01be533d3de9d7d
- https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser/commit/3492672eee593d5c158f239b6e9115498a5dbeac
- https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser
- https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser/releases/tag/1.20.6
- https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser/releases/tag/v2.3.0
More body-parser vulnerabilities
- TI-2026-79287 Crash in body-parser via trailing bytes after compressed request body CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.5
- TI-2025-12310 body-parser vulnerable to denial of service when url encoding is used CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 5.5
Sources
- CVE-2026-12590 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-12590 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-v422-hmwv-36x6 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-12590 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences