axios Improperly Controlled Modification of Dynamically-Determined Object Attributes Vulnerability (CVE-2026-42044)

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.