CVE-2026-76172

fast-uri is a URI parser for Node.js. During parsing it runs a legacy decoding pass over the scheme component and never re-escapes the result, and serialization writes the scheme back out verbatim, unlike the host component which is re-escaped. As a result an input whose scheme carries percent-encoded slashes parses as a scheme with no authority, so the parsed host and error are both undefined, yet resolving or normalizing that same input emits a network-path reference whose authority is attacker-chosen and re-parses to that host. An application that allowlists on the parsed host, or treats a reference with no authority as safe to resolve against its base, gets the opposite of what it checked, giving an off-site redirect, server-side request forgery, or address-policy bypass. The legacy decoder also expands non-standard escape forms, widening the issue past upstream filters, and control characters in the scheme can reach the output as raw carriage return and line feed. The affected versions are 2.3.1 up to but not including 2.4.5, 3.0.0 up to but not including 3.1.6, and 4.0.0 up to but not including 4.1.3. The issue is fixed in 2.4.5, 3.1.6, and 4.1.3, which reject a scheme that is not valid after decoding. Users should upgrade to a patched version.

fast-uri is a URI parser for Node.js. During parsing it runs a legacy decoding pass over the scheme component and never re-escapes the result, and serialization writes the scheme back out verbatim, unlike the host component which is re-escaped. As a result an input whose scheme carries percent-encoded slashes parses as a scheme with no authority, so the parsed host and error are both undefined, yet resolving or normalizing that same input emits a network-path reference whose authority is attacker-chosen and re-parses to that host. An application that allowlists on the parsed host, or treats a reference with no authority as safe to resolve against its base, gets the opposite of what it checked, giving an off-site redirect, server-side request forgery, or address-policy bypass. The legacy decoder also expands non-standard escape forms, widening the issue past upstream filters, and control characters in the scheme can reach the output as raw carriage return and line feed. The affected versions are 2.3.1 up to but not including 2.4.5, 3.0.0 up to but not including 3.1.6, and 4.0.0 up to but not including 4.1.3. The issue is fixed in 2.4.5, 3.1.6, and 4.1.3, which reject a scheme that is not valid after decoding. Users should upgrade to a patched version.

Impact

fast-uri decodes percent-encoded characters in the scheme component with the legacy global unescape() and serializes the result back as raw characters, without re-escaping it or validating it as a scheme. A scheme that decodes to characters outside the RFC 3986 scheme grammar can therefore introduce structure the original input did not contain.

For example, %2f%2fevil.example:/pwn parses with no authority (parse().host is undefined), but resolve() and normalize() return //evil.example:/pwn, which reparses with host evil.example. The %uXXXX form (%u002f%u002fevil.example:/pwn) produces the same result, and a scheme containing %0d%0a reaches the output as a raw CR LF.

Applications that normalize or resolve untrusted URLs before a redirect check, host allowlist, or outbound request decision, especially ones that treat a missing authority as same-origin, can be steered to an attacker-chosen authority, and a normalized URI placed in a response header can carry an injected CR LF.

Patches

Upgrade to fast-uri >= 4.1.3, or >= 3.1.6 in the v3.x release line, or >= 2.4.5 in the v2.x release line.

Workarounds

None. Upgrade to the patched version.

fast-uri is a URI parser for Node.js. During parsing it runs a legacy decoding pass over the scheme component and never re-escapes the result, and serialization writes the scheme back out verbatim, unlike the host component which is re-escaped. As a result an input whose scheme carries percent-encoded slashes parses as a scheme with no authority, so the parsed host and error are both undefined, yet resolving or normalizing that same input emits a network-path reference whose authority is attacker-chosen and re-parses to that host. An application that allowlists on the parsed host, or treats a reference with no authority as safe to resolve against its base, gets the opposite of what it checked, giving an off-site redirect, server-side request forgery, or address-policy bypass. The legacy decoder also expands non-standard escape forms, widening the issue past upstream filters, and control characters in the scheme can reach the output as raw carriage return and line feed. The affected versions are 2.3.1 up to but not including 2.4.5, 3.0.0 up to but not including 3.1.6, and 4.0.0 up to but not including 4.1.3. The issue is fixed in 2.4.5, 3.1.6, and 4.1.3, which reject a scheme that is not valid after decoding. Users should upgrade to a patched version.

fast-uri is a URI parser for Node.js. During parsing it runs a legacy decoding pass over the scheme component and never re-escapes the result, and serialization writes the scheme back out verbatim, unlike the host component which is re-escaped. As a result an input whose scheme carries percent-encoded slashes parses as a scheme with no authority, so the parsed host and error are both undefined, yet resolving or normalizing that same input emits a network-path reference whose authority is attacker-chosen and re-parses to that host. An application that allowlists on the parsed host, or treats a reference with no authority as safe to resolve against its base, gets the opposite of what it checked, giving an off-site redirect, server-side request forgery, or address-policy bypass. The legacy decoder also expands non-standard escape forms, widening the issue past upstream filters, and control characters in the scheme can reach the output as raw carriage return and line feed. The affected versions are 2.3.1 up to but not including 2.4.5, 3.0.0 up to but not including 3.1.6, and 4.0.0 up to but not including 4.1.3. The issue is fixed in 2.4.5, 3.1.6, and 4.1.3, which reject a scheme that is not valid after decoding. Users should upgrade to a patched version.

fast-uri is a URI parser for Node.js. During parsing it runs a legacy decoding pass over the scheme component and never re-escapes the result, and serialization writes the scheme back out verbatim, unlike the host component which is re-escaped. As a result an input whose scheme carries percent-encoded slashes parses as a scheme with no authority, so the parsed host and error are both undefined, yet resolving or normalizing that same input emits a network-path reference whose authority is attacker-chosen and re-parses to that host. An application that allowlists on the parsed host, or treats a reference with no authority as safe to resolve against its base, gets the opposite of what it checked, giving an off-site redirect, server-side request forgery, or address-policy bypass. The legacy decoder also expands non-standard escape forms, widening the issue past upstream filters, and control characters in the scheme can reach the output as raw carriage return and line feed. The affected versions are 2.3.1 up to but not including 2.4.5, 3.0.0 up to but not including 3.1.6, and 4.0.0 up to but not including 4.1.3. The issue is fixed in 2.4.5, 3.1.6, and 4.1.3, which reject a scheme that is not valid after decoding. Users should upgrade to a patched version.