Nuxt: Unauthenticated CPU exhaustion parsing and hashing the Nuxt island endpoint body before hash validation
🔗 CVE IDs covered (1)
📋 Description
Impact
The internal island renderer endpoint (/__nuxt_island/...) decodes and hashes attacker-controlled request input before it validates the URL-resident hash. An unauthenticated POST /__nuxt_island/<name>_<anything>.json with a large JSON body (for example ~4.6 MB / 150k keys) is fully read, destr-parsed, and run through ohash before the request is rejected with a 400. Because Nitro runs on a single event loop, this both wastes CPU on the doomed request and delays every concurrent request. A low request rate is enough to degrade or stall the server. No valid hash and no authentication are required.
Patches
Fixed in [email protected] and [email protected]. The island handler now enforces a raw body-size cap (413) and a JSON nesting-depth cap (400) before parsing or hashing, so oversized or deeply nested input is rejected cheaply.
Workarounds
Put a small request-body limit in front of /__nuxt_island/ at your reverse proxy / edge (islands legitimately send only a compact props payload), or disable server components if unused.
🎯 Affected products2
- npm/nuxt:>= 4.0.0, < 4.5.1
- npm/nuxt:>= 3.1.0, < 3.21.10
🔗 References (6)
- https://github.com/nuxt/nuxt/security/advisories/GHSA-9pgf-384g-p7mv
- https://github.com/nuxt/nuxt/commit/4e35ae9babd94be53246e31200232d48438bb34e
- https://github.com/nuxt/nuxt/commit/668cdfdfda41849ed11c1ee5e2067a11fc103b22
- https://github.com/nuxt/nuxt/releases/tag/v3.21.10
- https://github.com/nuxt/nuxt/releases/tag/v4.5.1
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-9pgf-384g-p7mv