CVE-2026-16728: undici vulnerable to downstream response desynchronization via retry interceptor

Impact

Undici's interceptors.retry() can deliver a response whose body length does not match the Content-Length header exposed to the application after a retry or resume of a partial response. Applications that use interceptors.retry() and forward upstream response headers and bodies downstream, for example proxy or gateway applications, may emit an invalid HTTP response with a stale Content-Length header. This can lead to downstream response desynchronization, connection hangs, or response corruption in clients or intermediaries that rely on the forwarded framing metadata.

A malicious or faulty upstream can respond to a range request with a 206 Partial Content response such as:

http Content-Range: bytes 0-99/300 Content-Length: 300

and then send only 99 bytes before closing the socket. interceptors.retry() can then retry with Range: bytes=99-99, receive the final byte, and deliver a 100-byte body to the application while the response headers still contain Content-Length: 300 from the first response.

The bug requires interceptors.retry() to be enabled, an upstream that returns a partial response with a mismatched framing header, and a downstream forwarder that does not remove or recalculate Content-Length.

Patches

Patched in undici v6.28.0, v7.29.0, and v8.9.0. Users should upgrade to one of these versions or later.

Workarounds

- Disable interceptors.retry() for untrusted upstreams. - Remove or recalculate Content-Length before forwarding a response body assembled or transformed by Undici.