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CVE PROGRAM SOURCE RECORD4.8 Medium

CVE-2026-42041

Axios: Authentication Bypass via Prototype Pollution Gadget in `validateStatus` Merge Strategy

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Status
Published
Published
Updated
Assigning organization
GitHub_M

Description

Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. Prior to 1.15.1 and 0.31.1, the Axios library is vulnerable to a Prototype Pollution "Gadget" attack that allows any Object.prototype pollution to silently suppress all HTTP error responses (401, 403, 500, etc.), causing them to be treated as successful responses. This completely bypasses application-level authentication and error handling. The root cause is that validateStatus is the only config property using the mergeDirectKeys merge strategy, which uses JavaScript's in operator — an operator that inherently traverses the prototype chain. When Object.prototype.validateStatus is polluted with () => true, all HTTP status codes are accepted as success. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.15.1 and 0.31.1.

Affected products

Version statuses are supplied by the assigning organization. Consult the original record for detailed ranges and platform conditions.

axios axios

  • >= 1.0.0, < 1.15.1affected
  • < 0.31.1affected

References