CVE-2026-42041
MediumCVSS 4.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk45th percentile - higher than 45% of all known CVEs
Summary
The Axios library before versions 1.15.1 and 0.31.1 is vulnerable to a Prototype Pollution attack that silences all HTTP error responses (401, 403, 500, etc.), treating them as successful. The root cause is the use of the `in` operator in the `mergeDirectKeys` merge strategy for the `validateStatus` property, allowing polluted prototypes to affect validation logic.
Risk Assessment
An attacker can completely bypass application authentication and error handling, causing unauthorized requests or server errors to be interpreted as successful responses. This leads to data integrity breaches and potential application takeover.
Recommendation
Immediately update Axios to version 1.15.1 or 0.31.1 (depending on your branch). If an update is not possible, implement custom HTTP status validation outside the library.
Original NVD description (English source)
Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. Prior to 1.15.1 and 0.31.1, the Axios library is vulnerable to a Prototype Pollution "Gadget" attack that allows any Object.prototype pollution to silently suppress all HTTP error responses (401, 403, 500, etc.), causing them to be treated as successful responses. This completely bypasses application-level authentication and error handling. The root cause is that validateStatus is the only config property using the mergeDirectKeys merge strategy, which uses JavaScript's in operator — an operator that inherently traverses the prototype chain. When Object.prototype.validateStatus is polluted with () => true, all HTTP status codes are accepted as success. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.15.1 and 0.31.1.