Medium

hono: Body Limit Middleware can be bypassed on AWS Lambda by understating `Content-Length`

  • Disclosed: 16.06.2026
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 10:22

Summary

The Body Limit Middleware trusts the request's Content-Length header to decide whether a body is within the limit. On AWS Lambda (API Gateway v1/v2, ALB, VPC Lattice, and Lambda@Edge) the body is delivered fully buffered and the adapter builds the request with the client-declared Content-Length, which need not match the actual payload. A client can declare a tiny Content-Length while sending a much larger body, slipping past the limit.

Details

When Content-Length is present and Transfer-Encoding is absent, the middleware compares the declared value against the limit and passes the request through if it is small enough. On standards-based runtimes the transport enforces that Content-Length matches the body, so this is safe. The Lambda adapters instead reconstruct the request from a buffered payload and copy the client's Content-Length verbatim, so the declared length and the real body size are decoupled.

This issue affects applications deployed on AWS Lambda that rely on the Body Limit Middleware to cap request body size.

Impact

The declared body-size limit can be bypassed: a handler reads a payload larger than the configured maximum. Processing the oversized payload (large JSON, multipart, etc.) consumes additional CPU and memory per request. The payload remains bounded by the platform's request size limits, and Lambda isolates invocations, so the impact is increased per-request resource usage rather than full denial of service. This affects applications deployed on AWS Lambda that use the Body Limit Middleware.

Affected software

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PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
npm package hono < 4.12.25 4.12.25

References

CVSS score 6.5/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-345
Platform
npm
Package
hono
Disclosed
16.06.2026
Updated
11.10.2026 10:22

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-rv63-4mwf-qqc2 - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: hono

All published vulnerabilities of this package (npm package), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

All (52) in the archive
Total entries
52
First → latest
12.2023 10.2026
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • High 7
  • Medium 41
  • Low 4

Disclosures per year

  1. 2023: 1
  2. 2024: 3
  3. 2025: 4
  4. 2026: 44
Severity:
  1. hono: Body Limit Middleware can be bypassed on AWS Lambda by understating `Content-Length` this entry
    Medium · 6.5 CVE-2026-54288 < 4.12.25 4.12.25
  2. High · 8.1 CVE-2025-62610 >= 1.1.0, < 4.10.2 4.10.2
  3. High · 7.5 CVE-2025-58362 >= 4.8.0, < 4.9.6 4.9.6

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