VulnerabilityPublished 20 Jan 2026

CVE-2025-59464: nodejs node · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects nodejs nodeSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium : upgrade to 24.12.0 when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 08:30 UTC

CVSS 3.0 base score

6.5Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 19% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 24.12.0

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 20 Jan 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade nodejs node to 24.12.0.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
nodejsnode	Affected >=24.12.0 <24.12.0	Fixed in 24.12.0
npmnode`pkg:npm/node`Other threats	Affected =24.12.0	Fixed in–

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

1. Upgrade Node.js to a version where this vulnerability is patched as soon as it becomes available. Monitor Node.js release notes and security advisories closely. 2. If immediate upgrade is not possible, implement rate limiting on TLS connection attempts to reduce the frequency of calls to socket.getPeerCertificate(true), thereby slowing memory leak progression. 3. Monitor application memory usage and set alerts for abnormal growth patterns indicative of leaks. 4. Review application code to minimize unnecessary calls to socket.getPeerCertificate(true), especially with the 'true' argument that triggers full certificate chain retrieval. 5. Consider deploying Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) or network-level protections to detect and block suspicious repeated TLS connection attempts from single clients. 6. Use container orchestration or process supervisors to automatically restart Node.js processes before memory exhaustion causes crashes. 7. Conduct penetration testing and stress testing simulating repeated TLS connections to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of mitigations. 8. Educate development and operations teams about this vulnerability to ensure awareness and timely response.

Description

CVE-2025-59464 is a medium severity memory leak vulnerability in Node.js version 24.12.0 affecting its OpenSSL integration. The flaw occurs when converting X.509 certificate fields to UTF-8 during calls to socket.getPeerCertificate(true), where allocated buffers are not freed. Remote clients can exploit this by repeatedly initiating TLS connections, causing steady memory growth and potential resource exhaustion leading to denial of service. No known exploits are currently reported in the wild. The vulnerability requires no authentication but does require user interaction via TLS connections.

Impact

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a risk primarily to the availability of services relying on Node.js 24.12.0 that perform TLS client certificate inspection via socket.getPeerCertificate(true). Industries with high TLS traffic such as finance, e-commerce, telecommunications, and public sector services could experience degraded performance or outages due to memory exhaustion. This can disrupt business operations, cause downtime, and impact customer trust. Since the vulnerability requires repeated TLS connections from remote clients, automated attacks or misconfigured clients could unintentionally trigger the leak. The lack of confidentiality or integrity impact reduces the risk of data breaches, but denial of service can still have significant operational and reputational consequences. Organizations with large-scale Node.js deployments or those using mutual TLS for authentication are most vulnerable. The absence of known exploits in the wild provides some time for mitigation, but proactive measures are necessary to prevent exploitation. The impact is compounded in cloud or containerized environments where resource limits are strict, potentially causing service restarts or failures.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

nodejs.org/en/blog/vulnerability/december-2025-security-releases (opens in a new tab)

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 28 Jan 2026, 20:21 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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