CVE-2026-97705
Moleculer: Unauthenticated Denial of Service via negative length field in the TCP transporter packet parser
What happened?
Moleculer is a progressive microservices framework for Node.js. Prior to 0.14.36 and 0.15.2, Parser._write in src/transporters/tcp/parser.js used Buffer.prototype.readInt32BE to read a signed packet length, so a remote unauthenticated peer could supply a negative value that caused packet.slice(length) to return the unchanged buffer while the while (packet.length > 0) loop continued indefinitely. The synchronous loop blocked the Node.js event loop and made every service in the process unresponsive until restart. The TCP transporter must be enabled and reachable, and neither CRC validation nor maxPacketSize prevents the malformed length value. This issue is fixed in versions 0.14.36 and 0.15.2.
Affected software and versions
| Software | Version information | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| moleculermoleculerjs | affected: >= 0.15.0, < 0.15.2; affected: < 0.14.36 | See vendor advisory |
Version information comes from the source record and can include unaffected products and exceptions. Distribution packages may contain backported fixes: an older upstream version alone does not prove a server is affected.
Is it being exploited?
This CVE was not listed in the CISA catalogue at our last retrieval. This does not establish that exploitation is absent.
How to respond
- Confirm the product, installed package version, and any configuration requirements in the vendor advisory.
- Follow the vendor’s remediation or workaround guidance in the references below. Structured fixed-version data is unavailable here; the publisher’s description may include a fix or workaround.
- Restart affected services if required, then verify the running version. Known exploitation may warrant investigation as well as patching.
Sources and remediation references
- https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-97705
- https://github.com/moleculerjs/moleculer/security/advisories/GHSA-h89v-g948-47vp
- https://github.com/moleculerjs/moleculer/commit/168ecbdc245c9a9d1dc4ef9b8a81dbae38ee3063
- https://github.com/moleculerjs/moleculer/commit/914074e502ae403a0338ad168b45b16d6bcc3e44
- https://github.com/moleculerjs/moleculer/releases/tag/v0.14.36
- https://github.com/moleculerjs/moleculer/releases/tag/v0.15.2