CVE-2026-101905

Think of Axios as the delivery truck your software uses to send and receive information over the internet. This flaw is like a saboteur quietly reprogramming the truck's GPS so it drives to a fake warehouse instead of the real destination — the driver (your app) doesn't notice, but the cargo (passwords, data) ends up in the wrong hands, and fake packages come back labeled as if they're genuine.

This matters if your application or product uses Axios (versions 1.15.2 up to but not including 1.20.0) to make web requests from a Node.js backend. It only becomes exploitable if your application also has a separate, unrelated bug that lets an attacker pollute shared JavaScript object properties — without that second flaw present, this issue cannot be triggered.

This is rated urgent because the weakness gives an attacker no-login, no-click control over where your app's web requests actually go, letting them silently steal data and return forged responses. There's no confirmed active exploitation in the wild yet and no public exploit code, but the attack requires no user interaction and is reachable by default wherever the prerequisite pollution bug exists, so treat this as a priority to patch now rather than wait for confirmed attacks.

Audit all Node.js services for Axios dependency versions in the range >=1.15.2, <1.20.0 (check direct and transitive dependencies via npm ls axios or a lockfile scan). Upgrade to Axios 1.20.0 or later, which sets its own createConnection option on the HTTP adapter rather than relying on prototype inheritance. There is no indication of breaking API changes tied to this fix, but run your HTTP integration tests after upgrading, especially any code using custom agents or connection pooling. As a temporary mitigation if you cannot upgrade immediately, audit and remediate any prototype-pollution sinks in your own codebase or other dependencies (e.g., unsafe object merge/clone utilities) since this Axios flaw is only exploitable in conjunction with such a bug — closing that door neutralizes this issue even pre-patch. No CISA KEV listing exists and no CISA-mandated remediation date applies. Monitor for unusual outbound connection destinations or unexpected TLS certificate mismatches as a detection signal, and watch Axios's advisories for any update to the affected range.

Weakness: CWE-441 (Unintended Proxy/Intermediary) and CWE-1321 (Prototype Pollution). Attack vector is network-based, requires no authentication and no user interaction, and is reachable in default configurations, but exploitation is gated on a co-resident prototype-pollution primitive capable of setting Object.prototype.createConnection. Exploit maturity is low: no public exploit code, no KEV listing, and no dated news reports of in-the-wild exploitation as of this writing. Predicted exploitation likelihood is low per EPSS scoring with a flat trend. Press attention is rising but framed as a roundup mention rather than confirmed incident reporting. Fixed in Axios 1.20.0, which assigns an explicit createConnection value on the HTTP adapter to prevent prototype-chain lookup.