Critical Axios Vulnerability Allows Remote Code Execution – PoC Exploit Released - cyberpress.org

Critical Axios Vulnerability Allows Remote Code Execution – PoC Exploit Released By AnuPriya April 13, 2026 Categories: Cyber Security NewsCybersecurityVulnerability A newly discovered critical vulnerability in the popular Axios HTTP client library has exposed countless web applications and cloud environments to potential Remote Code Execution (RCE) and full infrastructure compromise. Tracked as CVE-2026-40175, the flaw carries a CVSS 3.1 score of 9.9, marking it as a critical-level threat. According to the advisory, attackers can exploit this vulnerability to bypass AWS IMDSv2 protections and exfiltrate sensitive metadata and credentials from cloud environments. Discovery and Proof of Concept Release The issue was discovered by security researcher Raulvdv and later published by Jasonsaayman. Shortly after disclosure, a public Proof of Concept (PoC) was released online, demonstrating real-world cloud exploitation scenarios. The publication of this PoC increases the urgency for developers to apply mitigations immediately. The underlying flaw lies in Axios’s header handling logic, particularly in the lib/adapters/http.js file. The vulnerability stems from unrestricted header processing and the absence of proper input sanitization (CWE-113). When combined with Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) (CWE-918) and HTTP Request Smuggling (CWE-444), it forms a highly dangerous attack chain sometimes referred to as a “Gadget Attack Chain.” Unlike typical input-based exploits, this vulnerability requires no direct user interaction. Instead, attackers can exploit it through JavaScript prototype pollution. If any dependent package, such as body-parser, qs, or minimist, pollutes Object. prototype Axios automatically merges these tainted properties into its configuration during request creation. Because the affected Axios versions fail to sanitize values for carriage return and line feed (CRLF) characters, the merged property becomes a malicious header payload capable of executing HTTP request smuggling attacks. The PoC showcases how a seemingly harmless outbound request can be hijacked. When Axios merges a polluted property (for example, x-amz-target) into headers, these headers are written to the socket without validation. The attacker can then inject a crafted PUT request to the AWS EC2 Metadata Service (169.254.169.254), including the required X-aws-ec2-metadata-token-ttl-seconds header to successfully bypass the IMDSv2 token requirement. Through this chain, attackers can steal IAM session tokens, escalate privileges, and gain complete control of the targeted cloud environment. Additional impacts include authentication bypass, cache poisoning, and potential RCE inside containerized or serverless infrastructures. All Axios versions before 1.13.2 are confirmed vulnerable to this attack chain. Developers and organizations using Axios in production environments are strongly advised to upgrade to version 1.15.0 or later immediately. The patched version enforces strict header validation, rejecting any input containing invalid CRLF sequences. This ensures malicious headers are never written to the socket, effectively blocking prototype pollution-based request smuggling attempts. Security teams should also audit third-party dependencies for potential prototype pollution vectors and implement dependency scanning tools to monitor vulnerable npm packages. Follow us on Google News , LinkedIn and X to Get More Instant Updates. Set Cyberpress as a Preferred Source in Google Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp AnuPriya Any Priya is a cybersecurity reporter at Cyber Press, specializing in cyber attacks, dark web monitoring, data breaches, vulnerabilities, and malware. She delivers in-depth analysis on emerging threats and digital security trends. 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