GHSA-r635-g3xr-vw7x
Socket.IO: Engine.IO Polling Transport Connection Exhaustion
Packages
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Impact
An unauthenticated remote attacker can cause a denial of service in affected versions of **engine.io** by opening Engine.IO polling sessions and sending an invalid binary `POST` request with:
```
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
```
against an Engine.IO protocol v4 polling transport.
In the vulnerable code path, the server reports a transport error but does not properly close the HTTP response associated with the malformed request. As a result, the underlying HTTP connection may remain open, consuming one server-side socket/resource per crafted request.
An attacker can repeat this with many sessions to exhaust available HTTP connections, sockets, file descriptors, or related server resources, potentially preventing legitimate clients from connecting.
### Patches
The issue was fixed in:
- **engine.io `6.6.7`**
The fix ensures that invalid binary polling `POST` requests are explicitly rejected with an HTTP response and closed properly.
Users should upgrade to:
```sh
npm install engine.io@^6.6.7
```
or a later fixed version.
If using Socket.IO through the monorepo/packages, update to a Socket.IO release that depends on a fixed `engine.io` version.
### Workarounds
If upgrading immediately is not possible, possible mitigations include:
- Block or reject polling `POST` requests with `Content-Type: application/octet-stream` for Engine.IO protocol v4 at a reverse proxy, load balancer, WAF, or application middleware.
- Disable HTTP long-polling if your deployment can use WebSocket-only transport.
- Enforce strict request/connection timeouts at the HTTP server, reverse proxy, or load balancer.
- Apply per-IP rate limits and connection limits for Engine.IO endpoints.
- Restrict access to the Socket.IO/Engine.IO endpoint where feasible.
Example Socket.IO configuration to disable polling, if compatible with your clients:
```js
const io = new Server(httpServer, {
transports: ["websocket"],
});
```
## References
- Fix commit: https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/commit/fc11285e14964c2132d122164bf130c355f60671
- engine.io changelog entry for `6.6.7`: https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/blob/main/packages/engine.io/CHANGELOG.md#667-2026-04-27
- socket.io repository: https://github.com/socketio/socket.io
- engine.io package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/engine.io
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.
- https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/security/advisories/GHSA-r635-g3xr-vw7x
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-59725
- https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/commit/fc11285e14964c2132d122164bf130c355f60671
- https://github.com/socketio/socket.io
- https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/releases/tag/[email protected]