CVE-2024-22019 is a high-severity vulnerability affecting Node.js HTTP servers across all major versions from 4.0 through 21.0. The flaw resides in the handling of HTTP requests that use chunked transfer encoding. Specifically, the Node.js HTTP server implementation fails to impose limits on the size of chunk extension bytes, allowing an attacker to send a specially crafted HTTP request with chunked encoding that causes the server to read an unbounded number of bytes from a single connection. This unchecked reading leads to resource exhaustion, primarily impacting CPU and network bandwidth. The vulnerability effectively bypasses standard protective mechanisms such as request timeouts and body size limits, which normally mitigate denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The root cause aligns with CWE-404 (Improper Resource Shutdown or Release), indicating that the server does not properly manage resource consumption under malicious input conditions. Although no known exploits are currently reported in the wild, the vulnerability's CVSS 3.0 score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H) highlights its potential for remote, unauthenticated exploitation resulting in high impact on availability without affecting confidentiality or integrity. This vulnerability is particularly critical for environments running Node.js as a backend for web services, APIs, or microservices, where HTTP chunked encoding is supported and exposed to untrusted clients. Attackers can exploit this flaw to degrade or completely deny service by overwhelming server resources, potentially causing outages or degraded performance for legitimate users.

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2024-22019 can be significant, especially for those relying heavily on Node.js-based infrastructure for web applications, cloud services, or internal APIs. The denial-of-service nature of the vulnerability can lead to service outages, impacting business continuity, customer experience, and potentially causing financial losses. Critical sectors such as finance, healthcare, telecommunications, and government services that use Node.js servers could face operational disruptions. Additionally, the bypass of standard safeguards means that traditional mitigation strategies may be insufficient, increasing the risk of successful attacks. Organizations with public-facing Node.js servers are particularly vulnerable, as attackers do not require authentication or user interaction to exploit this flaw. The increased CPU and network bandwidth consumption could also lead to cascading effects on network infrastructure and other dependent systems. Given the widespread adoption of Node.js in European tech ecosystems, the vulnerability poses a broad threat that could affect both large enterprises and smaller organizations.

To mitigate CVE-2024-22019 effectively, European organizations should: 1) Immediately update Node.js to a patched version once available, as no patch links are currently provided, monitoring official Node.js security advisories for updates. 2) Implement network-level protections such as rate limiting and connection throttling on HTTP traffic to limit the impact of malicious chunked requests. 3) Deploy Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) or reverse proxies configured to detect and block suspicious chunked transfer encoding patterns or unusually large chunk extensions. 4) Monitor server resource usage closely to detect abnormal CPU or bandwidth spikes indicative of exploitation attempts. 5) Harden HTTP server configurations by disabling chunked transfer encoding if not required by the application or by enforcing strict validation of HTTP headers and chunk sizes at the application or middleware level. 6) Conduct regular security assessments and penetration testing focusing on HTTP protocol handling to identify potential abuse scenarios. 7) Educate development and operations teams about this vulnerability to ensure rapid response and remediation. These measures go beyond generic advice by focusing on proactive detection, network-level controls, and configuration hardening tailored to the specific exploitation vector of this vulnerability.