Axios: Full Man-in-the-Middle via Prototype Pollution Gadget in `config.proxy` (axios axios)

CVE-2026-44494
HIGH 8.7

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 1.06 % · percentile 64 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
GitHub_M
NVD status
Modified

Description

Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. From 1.0.0 to before 1.16.0, the Axios library is vulnerable to a Prototype Pollution "Gadget" attack that allows any Object.prototype pollution in the application's dependency tree to be escalated into a full Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack — intercepting, reading, and modifying all HTTP traffic including authentication credentials. The HTTP adapter at lib/adapters/http.js:670 reads config.proxy via standard property access, which traverses the prototype chain. Because proxy is not present in Axios defaults, the merged config object has no own proxy property, making it trivially injectable via prototype pollution. Once injected, setProxy() routes all HTTP requests through the attacker's proxy server. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.16.0.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-441 — Unintended Proxy or Intermediary
  • CWE-1321 — Improperly Controlled Modification of Object Prototype Attributes
  • CWE-915 — Improperly Controlled Modification of Dynamically-Determined Object Attributes

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.7CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:NGitHub_M
CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.7CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:Nredhat-SADP
CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.7CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:NNVD · security-advisories@github.com (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.7CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:NNVD · 0b0ca135-0b70-47e7-9f44-1890c2a1c46c (Secondary)

Advisories

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
axios · axiosaffected >= 1.0.0, < 1.16.0

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD