multiparty is a Node.js library for parsing multipart/form-data request bodies. In versions from 2.1.0 up to but not including 4.3.1, the parser does not bound the amount of memory used while accumulating the headers of a single multipart part. An unauthenticated attacker can send a single request whose part carries a very large volume of header bytes, forcing the parser to buffer all of them and exhausting the process memory, which crashes the server. This is a denial of service with no confidentiality or integrity impact. The issue is fixed in multiparty 4.3.1, which caps the size of the accumulated part headers. Users should upgrade to multiparty 4.3.1 or later.

Impact

multiparty@4.2.3 and lower versions are vulnerable to denial of service via uncaught exception. By sending a multipart/form-data request with a Content-Disposition: filename=utf-8'' header containing a malformed percent-encoding (e.g., %FF, %GG), the parser invokes decodeURI on the value without try/catch. The resulting URIError propagates as an uncaught exception and crashes the process. Any service accepting multipart uploads via multiparty is affected.

Patches

Users should upgrade to multiparty@4.3.0 or higher.

Workarounds

None.

Impact

multiparty@4.2.3 and lower versions are vulnerable to denial of service via uncaught exception. By sending a multipart/form-data request with a field name that collides with an inherited Object.prototype property (e.g., proto, constructor, toString), the parser invokes .push() on the inherited prototype value rather than an array, throwing a TypeError that propagates as an uncaught exception and crashes the process. Any service accepting multipart uploads via multiparty is affected.

Patches

Users should upgrade to multiparty@4.3.0 or higher.

Workarounds

None.

Impact

multiparty@4.2.3 and lower versions are vulnerable to denial of service via regular expression backtracking in the Content-Disposition filename parameter parser. A multipart upload with a long header value containing !filename="1 repeated can cause regex matching to take seconds, blocking the event loop. Any service accepting multipart uploads via multiparty is affected.

Patches

Users should upgrade to multiparty@4.3.0 or higher.

Workarounds

None. Limiting upload sizes at the proxy/gateway layer reduces but does not eliminate the attack surface, since a small ~8 KB header is sufficient to trigger the vulnerable backtracking.

Resources

- OWASP: Regular expression Denial of Service (ReDoS)