Monitor vulnerabilities like this one. Sign up free to get alerted when software you use is affected.
6.5

Undici library can send broken HTTP requests with bad headers

CVE-2026-1525 GHSA-2mjp-6q6p-2qxm
Summary

Using Undici to send HTTP requests with duplicate Content-Length headers can cause problems. This can lead to errors with some servers or systems, or even allow hackers to steal data. If you're using Undici, make sure to handle headers carefully to avoid these issues.

What to do
  • Update undici to version 6.24.0.
  • Update undici to version 7.24.0.
Affected software
VendorProductAffected versionsFix available
undici <= 6.24.0 6.24.0
undici > 7.0.0 , <= 7.24.0 7.24.0
Original title
Undici has an HTTP Request/Response Smuggling issue
Original description
### Impact

Undici allows duplicate HTTP `Content-Length` headers when they are provided in an array with case-variant names (e.g., `Content-Length` and `content-length`). This produces malformed HTTP/1.1 requests with multiple conflicting `Content-Length` values on the wire.

**Who is impacted:**
- Applications using `undici.request()`, `undici.Client`, or similar low-level APIs with headers passed as flat arrays
- Applications that accept user-controlled header names without case-normalization

**Potential consequences:**
- **Denial of Service**: Strict HTTP parsers (proxies, servers) will reject requests with duplicate `Content-Length` headers (400 Bad Request)
- **HTTP Request Smuggling**: In deployments where an intermediary and backend interpret duplicate headers inconsistently (e.g., one uses the first value, the other uses the last), this can enable request smuggling attacks leading to ACL bypass, cache poisoning, or credential hijacking

### Patches

Patched in the undici version v7.24.0 and v6.24.0. Users should upgrade to this version or later.

### Workarounds

If upgrading is not immediately possible:

1. **Validate header names**: Ensure no duplicate `Content-Length` headers (case-insensitive) are present before passing headers to undici
2. **Use object format**: Pass headers as a plain object (`{ 'content-length': '123' }`) rather than an array, which naturally deduplicates by key
3. **Sanitize user input**: If headers originate from user input, normalize header names to lowercase and reject duplicates
nvd CVSS3.1 6.5
Vulnerability type
CWE-444
Published: 13 Mar 2026 · Updated: 14 Mar 2026 · First seen: 12 Mar 2026