Nuxt 4.0.0 before 4.4.7 and 3.18.0 before 3.21.7, when running the development server (nuxt dev) on Linux, binds the vite-node IPC server to an abstract-namespace Unix socket without permission restrictions, allowing local users to enumerate and connect. Unprivileged co-resident users can exploit the unprotected module request handler to read arbitrary files such as .env and SSH keys through the SSR plugin pipeline. Production builds are unaffected, as the IPC server runs only in development.

Nuxt versions 4.0.0 before 4.4.7 and 3.x before 3.21.7 fail to validate script-capable URLs in the navigateTo open option, allowing client-side script execution. Attackers can supply javascript: URLs through the open parameter to execute arbitrary scripts in the application's origin when user-controlled input is passed to navigateTo.

Nuxt versions 4.0.0 before 4.4.7 and 3.x before 3.21.7 accept protocol-relative paths such as //evil.com in the reloadNuxtApp function; these pass the script-protocol check but resolve to a cross-origin URL against the current page protocol. Attackers can inject paths like //evil.com to redirect users to attacker-controlled hosts, enabling phishing and OAuth authorization-code theft.

Nuxt versions 4.0.0 before 4.4.7 and 3.x before 3.21.7 contain a server-side open redirect vulnerability in navigateTo that fails to properly validate path-normalized payloads like /..//evil.com and /.//evil.com. Attackers can bypass external-host checks using path-normalization techniques to redirect users to attacker-controlled sites via the Location header or meta-refresh, enabling phishing and OAuth authorization-code theft.

Nuxt before 4.4.7 (and the 3.x branch before 3.21.7) contains a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the NoScript component that writes slot content to innerHTML without escaping. Attackers can inject malicious scripts through untrusted data in NoScript slots, such as route.query parameters, which execute in the document context when the noscript tag is implicitly closed by script tags.

Summary

<NuxtLink> did not validate the URL scheme of values bound to its to or href props before rendering them into the href attribute of the underlying <a> element. When an application binds attacker-controlled input (a query parameter, a CMS field, a user-supplied profile URL) to <NuxtLink :to> or :href, the attacker can supply a javascript: or vbscript: URL that is reflected verbatim into the rendered markup. Clicking the link executes the supplied script in the origin of the Nuxt application, resulting in reflected DOM-based cross-site scripting. A data:text/html,... payload reflected through the same sink does not execute in the application's origin but enables a same-tab phishing surface anchored to a legitimate application link.

The same value was exposed to consumers of the component's custom slot via the href and route.href props, so applications that re-bind those values to their own anchors were affected identically.

Unlike the previously reported navigateTo issue (CVE-2024-34343), the sink here is the rendered anchor itself; the existing isScriptProtocol checks in navigateTo and reloadNuxtApp are not on the code path. The onClick handler intentionally returns early for external links so the browser's native protocol-based navigation runs.

Affected component

- File: packages/nuxt/src/app/components/nuxt-link.ts - Sink: h('a', { href: href.value, ... }) in the default render, plus the href / route.href props passed to the custom slot. - Broken check: external auto-detection treated any hasProtocol(path, { acceptRelative: true }) value as an "external link", then rendered the value directly as <a href> without rejecting script-capable protocols. There was no equivalent of the navigateTo isScriptProtocol(protocol) gate in this path.

Impact

Any Nuxt application that binds user-controlled values to <NuxtLink :to> / :href was vulnerable. Common shapes: profile-link rendering (<NuxtLink :to="user.website">), "share this" / "open in new tab" handlers that pass through a query parameter, CMS-driven landing pages that render <NuxtLink :to="cms.cta.url">, and marketplace listings that show seller-supplied links.

For javascript: / vbscript: the primitive is reflected XSS in the application's first-party origin (session theft for non-HttpOnly cookies, CSRF token theft, account takeover via DOM rewriting, credential harvesting via fake login overlays). For data:text/html,... the attacker gets a same-tab phishing surface anchored to a legitimate application link.

Patches

Fixed in nuxt@4.4.7 (commit 0103ce06) and backported to nuxt@3.21.7 (commit 53284043). The fix sanitises the resolved external href before it is passed to <a> or the custom slot: control characters and whitespace are stripped, leading view-source: prefixes are unwrapped, and any remaining script-capable scheme (per isScriptProtocol) causes the href to be replaced with an empty string.

Workarounds

Until you can upgrade, validate URLs at the source before binding them to <NuxtLink :to> / :href. For example, only accept paths that start with / (and not //), or run user-supplied URLs through new URL(value) and reject anything whose protocol is not in an allow-list (typically http: and https:).

Impact

Nuxt looks up routeRules for the current navigation by calling getRouteRules({ path: to.path }) from the page-router plugin and the no-pages router plugin. The compiled routeRules matcher (built on rou3) performs case-sensitive matching, while vue-router is configured with its default sensitive: false and matches paths case-insensitively.

The two routers therefore disagree on which rules apply to a given request path: vue-router still matches the page record for /Admin/dashboard, but the routeRules lookup for the same path returns no match. Any appMiddleware declared via routeRules is never added to the middleware set and never runs, on both SSR and client navigations. The same path skips other path-keyed route rules in the same way (ssr, redirect, appLayout, and the prerender / payload hints used client-side).

For applications using routeRules with appMiddleware as an authorization gate (a documented pattern), an attacker can flip the case of any static segment in a protected URL (for example /Admin/dashboard instead of /admin/dashboard) to render the protected page with the middleware skipped. The server returns the fully server-rendered page including any useFetch / useAsyncData results captured during SSR.

This is an instance of CWE-178 (Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity) leading to CWE-863 (Incorrect Authorization) for apps that treat appMiddleware as an authorization boundary.

Mitigating factors

- Only affects apps that use routeRules.appMiddleware. The more idiomatic definePageMeta({ middleware }) is bound to the matched route record and is unaffected. - Nuxt route middleware is documented as an app-layer concern, not a server-side auth boundary; well-built apps enforce authorization again at the API / data-fetching layer. - Apps that explicitly set router.options.sensitive = true are not affected.

Patches

Fixed in nuxt@4.4.7 (commit 07e39cd6) and backported to nuxt@3.21.7 (commit 3f3e3fa7). The fix normalizes the path used for routeRules lookups so it matches vue-router's default case-insensitive semantics.

Workarounds

Until you can upgrade, you can mitigate by either:

1. Setting router.options.sensitive = true so vue-router matches case-sensitively (this changes route-matching behaviour app-wide). 2. Moving security-critical middleware off routeRules.appMiddleware and onto definePageMeta({ middleware: [...] }) on the protected page components, which is bound to the matched record. 3. Enforcing authorization at the API / data-fetching layer (which you should be doing in any case).

Credit

Reported by Anthropic / Claude through Anthropic's coordinated vulnerability disclosure process. Reference: ANT-2026-9FSEBYMC.

Summary

When experimental.componentIslands is enabled (default in Nuxt 4), any .server.vue file under pages/ is automatically registered as a server island under the key page<routeName> and exposed via the /nuxtisland/:name endpoint. Until this fix, requests through that endpoint rendered the page component directly via the SSR renderer without instantiating Vue Router, which meant route middleware declared on the page (including definePageMeta({ middleware })) did not run.

For Nuxt applications that gate a .server.vue page behind route middleware as their sole auth check, an unauthenticated attacker could bypass that check by requesting /nuxtisland/page<routeName><anyhash> directly and receiving the server-rendered HTML.

Affected configurations

All three conditions must hold for an application to be vulnerable:

1. experimental.componentIslands is enabled (the default in Nuxt 4; opt-in in Nuxt 3). 2. The application defines one or more .server.vue files under pages/, registering them as routed pages. 3. Authentication / authorization for at least one such page is enforced solely via route middleware (middleware/.ts referenced from definePageMeta), without a server-side check inside the page or its data layer.

Applications that enforce auth inside the island's own data layer (server-only API routes, useRequestEvent + manual session checks, etc.) were not affected. The general "route middleware does not run for non-page island components" behaviour is documented and unchanged; this advisory concerns the .server.vue page case specifically, where running middleware is the user's clear expectation.

Details

- Build (packages/nuxt/src/components/templates.ts): .server.vue pages are registered as island components with page prefix, making them addressable through /nuxtisland/page<routeName><hashId>. - Runtime (packages/nitro-server/src/runtime/handlers/island.ts): the handler resolves the requested island component and renders it via renderer.renderToString(ssrContext). The Vue Router plugin previously short-circuited middleware execution whenever ssrContext.islandContext was set. - The two paths interact so that route middleware declared on the source page never runs.

Proof of concept

Given a page app/pages/secret.server.vue:

vue <script setup lang="ts"> definePageMeta({ middleware: 'auth' }) </script>

<template> <h1>SECRET DATA</h1> </template>

with middleware/auth.ts blocking unauthenticated access:

bash Direct page request: blocked by middleware curl -i http://localhost:3000/secret -> 403 / redirect, depending on the middleware

Island request: middleware did not run before this fix curl -i 'http://localhost:3000/nuxtisland/pagesecretanyhash' -> 200 OK, body includes <h1>SECRET DATA</h1>

Patches

Patched in nuxt@4.4.6 and nuxt@3.21.6 by #35092. The Vue Router plugin now runs middleware and redirect handling for page islands (i.e. islands that originate from .server.vue files in pages/). The island handler propagates middleware-issued responses (~renderResponse), and a new beforeResolve guard returns HTTP 400 when the requested page<name> does not match the route component the URL resolves to.

Non-page island components are unaffected - they continue to render without route middleware, by design.

Workarounds

If you cannot upgrade immediately:

- Enforce authentication inside the .server.vue page itself, not via route middleware. Read the session from useRequestEvent() and throw createError({ statusCode: 401 }) (or redirect) before returning data. This is the recommended pattern for islands regardless of this advisory. - Disable experimental.componentIslands if your app does not use the feature. - If your app must keep route-middleware-only auth, gate the /nuxtisland/page URL prefix at your reverse proxy or in a server middleware.

Summary

The /nuxtisland/ endpoint accepts attacker-controlled props query/body parameters and renders any island component without verifying that the URL-resident hash (<Name><hashId>.json) was actually issued for those inputs by <NuxtIsland>. The hash is computed and embedded client-side but never validated server-side, so the same path can return materially different responses depending on the query.

Island components are documented as rendering independently of route context - page middleware does not apply to them, and they are intentionally cacheable as a function of their props. This advisory does not treat that contract as a vulnerability. It treats the absence of a binding between the URL the cache keys on and the response served at that URL as one.

Impact

In applications where a CDN or reverse-proxy in front of the app caches /nuxtisland/ keyed by path only (ignoring query) - a documented misconfiguration class, see GHSA-jvhm-gjrh-3h93 - an attacker can prime the cache for a path with their own choice of props, and subsequent users requesting the same path receive the attacker's rendered HTML rather than the response intended for them. The cache entry persists until normal expiry.

Where the affected island has any prop flowing into an unsafe HTML sink in application code (v-html, innerHTML, a third-party renderer treating a prop as HTML), this becomes stored XSS in the embedding page's origin until the cache entry expires. HttpOnly cookies remain out of reach but anything else in the origin (other cookies, in-origin requests, DOM state) is reachable by the injected script.

Preconditions:

- experimental.componentIslands enabled (or the default 'auto' with at least one server / island component in the app). - A shared intermediary cache (CDN, reverse-proxy, edge cache) keyed on path only. - For the XSS pivot specifically: an application-authored island that puts a prop through an unsafe HTML sink.

Without the second precondition, the response shape is per-request and unaffected. Without the third, the worst case is content-swap / inert HTML injection rather than script execution.

Patches

Patched in nuxt@4.4.6 and nuxt@3.21.6 by #35077. The island handler now recomputes the expected hashId from (name, props, context) using the same ohash function <NuxtIsland> already uses to embed the hash in the URL, and rejects requests (HTTP 400) whose URL-resident hash does not match. The response is now a pure function of the request path: a path-keyed shared cache returns the correct response to every requester for that path, and an attacker cannot synthesise a path whose hash matches arbitrary props.

Workarounds

For users unable to upgrade immediately:

- Ensure any intermediary cache keys /nuxtisland/ on the full query string, not on the path alone. This is the recommended configuration regardless. - Audit application-authored islands for props flowing into v-html / innerHTML / similar HTML sinks; treat island props as untrusted user input.

Note on island authentication

[!IMPORTANT] It's important to remember that route middleware does not run when rendering island components, and islands cannot rely on routing-layer auth. Applications gating sensitive data behind page middleware should enforce that auth inside the island's own data layer (server-only routes, useRequestEvent + manual session checks, etc.) rather than relying on the embedding page's middleware - this was true before this advisory and remains true after it.

A separate advisory addresses .server.vue pages registered as page<routeName> islands, where the documented "middleware doesn't run for islands" contract collides with the page's own definePageMeta({ middleware }) declaration in a way that constitutes a genuine bug rather than documented behaviour.

Summary navigateTo() with external: true generates a server-side HTML redirect body containing a <meta http-equiv="refresh"> tag. The destination URL is only sanitized by replacing " with %22, leaving <, >, &, and ' unencoded. An attacker who can influence the URL passed to navigateTo(url, { external: true }) can break out of the content="…" attribute and inject arbitrary HTML/JavaScript that executes under the application's origin.

This is a different root cause from CVE-2024-34343 (GHSA-vf6r-87q4-2vjf), which addressed javascript: protocol bypass. The issue here is triggered by any valid URL containing >.

Impact Applications that pass user-controlled input to navigateTo(url, { external: true }) — typically via a ?next= / ?redirect= query parameter used for post-login or "return to" flows — are vulnerable to reflected cross-site scripting. The injected script runs in the context of the application's origin during the server-rendered redirect response, before the meta-refresh fires.

Details In packages/nuxt/src/app/composables/router.ts, the SSR redirect path builds an HTML response body with only " percent-encoded in the destination URL:

ts const encodedLoc = location.replace(/"/g, '%22') nuxtApp.ssrContext!['~renderResponse'] = { status: sanitizeStatusCode(options?.redirectCode || 302, 302), body: <!DOCTYPE html><html><head><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=${encodedLoc}"></head></html>, headers: { location: encodeURL(location, isExternalHost) }, }

The Location header is normalised through encodeURL() (which uses the URL constructor and correctly percent-encodes attribute-significant characters). The HTML body uses a narrower sanitiser. That mismatch is the root cause.

Proof of concept

Global middleware that forwards a query parameter to navigateTo:

ts // middleware/redirect.global.ts export default defineNuxtRouteMiddleware((to) => { const next = to.query.next as string | undefined if (next) { return navigateTo(next, { external: true }) } })

Request:

GET /?next=https://evil.example/x><img src=x onerror=alert(document.domain)>

Response body:

html <!DOCTYPE html><html><head><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://evil.example/x><img src=x onerror=alert(document.domain)>"></head></html>

The > after evil.example/x terminates the content="…" attribute, and the <img onerror> tag executes JavaScript in the application's origin before any redirect occurs.

Patches Fixed in nuxt@4.4.6 and nuxt@3.21.6 by #35052. The fix percent-encodes the full set of HTML-attribute-significant characters (&, ", ', <, >) before interpolating the URL into the meta-refresh body

Workarounds If you can't upgrade immediately, validate user-controlled URLs before passing them to navigateTo(url, { external: true }). At minimum, normalise through new URL(input).toString() and reject inputs containing < or > (a normalised URL with these characters is malformed and safe to refuse).