Reference page — cumulative record through Sunday, October 4, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.
Axios: Invisible JSON Response Tampering via Prototype Pollution Gadget in `parseReviver`
AV AC PR UI S C I A CVSS EPSS %ile KEV
N L N N U H H N 9.1 .0086 57.1 —
AFFECTED
Product Versions Fixed
axios >= 1.0.0, < 1.15.2 – —
TIMELINE
Apr 23 Reserved by GitHub_M
Apr 24 Published (CNA: GitHub_M)
Aug 24 EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2026-42044 (axios). Public exploit reference added.
Aug 24 RESCORED — CVE-2026-42044 (axios). CVSS 6.5 → 9.1 (NVD).
Aug 26 EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2026-42044 (axios). Public exploit reference added.
Sep 7 EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2026-42044 (axios). Public exploit reference added.
Sep 10 EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2026-42044 (axios). Public exploit reference added.
Description
Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. From 1.0.0 to before 1.15.2, he Axios library is vulnerable to a Prototype Pollution "Gadget" attack that allows any Object.prototype pollution in the application's dependency tree to be escalated into surgical, invisible modification of all JSON API responses — including privilege escalation, balance manipulation, and authorization bypass. The default transformResponse function at lib/defaults/index.js:124 calls JSON.parse(data, this.parseReviver), where this is the merged config object. Because parseReviver is not present in Axios defaults, not validated by assertOptions, and not subject to any constraints, a polluted Object.prototype.parseReviver function is called for every key-value pair in every JSON response, allowing the attacker to selectively modify individual values while leaving the rest of the response intact. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.15.2.
About this page
This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2026-42044 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Sunday, October 4, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.
