websockets ws up to 5.2.4/6.2.3/7.5.10/8.20.x Network Traffic resource consumption

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability categorized as problematic has been discovered in websockets ws up to 5.2.4/6.2.3/7.5.10/8.20.x. This issue affects some unknown processing of the component Network Traffic Handler. Such manipulation leads to resource consumption. This vulnerability is referenced as CVE-2026-48779. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. No exploit is available. It is advisable to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as problematic, has been found in websockets ws up to 5.2.4/6.2.3/7.5.10/8.20.x. Affected by this issue is an unknown functionality of the component Network Traffic Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a resource consumption vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-400. The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources. Impacted is availability. CVE summarizes:

ws is an open source WebSocket client and server for Node.js. All versions from 1.1.0 up to (but not including) 5.2.5, from 6.0.0 up to 6.2.4, from 7.0.0 up to 7.5.11, and from 8.0.0 up to 8.21.0 are affected by a memory exhaustion DoS vulnerability. A peer can send a high volume of exceptionally small fragments and data chunks, 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. This issue has been fixed in versions 5.2.5, 6.2.4, 7.5.11, and 8.21.0.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-48779 since 05/22/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1499.

Upgrading to version 5.2.5, 6.2.4, 7.5.11 or 8.21.0 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• websockets

Name

• ws

Version

• 5.2.0
• 5.2.1
• 5.2.2
• 5.2.3
• 5.2.4
• 6.2.0
• 6.2.1
• 6.2.2
• 6.2.3
• 7.5.0
• 7.5.1
• 7.5.2
• 7.5.3
• 7.5.4
• 7.5.5
• 7.5.6
• 7.5.7
• 7.5.8
• 7.5.9
• 7.5.10
• 8.0
• 8.1
• 8.2
• 8.3
• 8.4
• 8.5
• 8.6
• 8.7
• 8.8
• 8.9
• 8.10
• 8.11
• 8.12
• 8.13
• 8.14
• 8.15
• 8.16
• 8.17
• 8.18
• 8.19
• 8.20

Website

• Product: https://github.com/websockets/ws/

CPE 2.3info

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