Cross-site Scripting (XSS)Weakness · CWE-79

CVE-2026-41683

HIGH · 8.6 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-05-08
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
95/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
i18next-http-middleware is a middleware to be used with Node.js web frameworks like express or Fastify and also for Deno. Prior to version 3.9.3, i18next-http-middleware wrote user-controlled language values into the Content-Language response header after passing them through utils.escape(), which is an HTML-entity encoder that does not strip carriage return, line feed, or other control characters. When the application used an older i18next (< 19.5.0) that still exercised the backward-compatibility fallback at LanguageDetector.js:100 or otherwise produced a raw detected value, CRLF sequences in the attacker-controlled lng parameter reached res.setHeader('Content-Language', ...) verbatim. This issue has been patched in version 3.9.3.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · high confidence

i18next-http-middleware before 3.9.3 is vulnerable to HTTP Response Splitting/Header Injection. User-supplied language parameters containing CRLF sequences are written to the Content-Language response header via utils.escape(), which encodes HTML entities but does not strip carriage return or line feed characters. When used with i18next versions prior to 19.5.0, raw detected language values pass through without sanitization, allowing attackers to inject arbitrary headers or split HTTP responses.

MitigationUpgrade i18next-http-middleware to version 3.9.3 or later. Additionally, upgrading to i18next >= 19.5.0 is recommended to eliminate the backward-compatibility fallback path that exposes raw detected values.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
High
Availability
Low

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:L

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Check i18next-http-middleware version
    Run 'npm list i18next-http-middleware' or check package.json dependencies to identify the installed version
    Affected if Version is lower than 3.9.3
  2. Check i18next version
    Run 'npm list i18next' or check package.json dependencies to identify the installed version
    Affected if Version is lower than 19.5.0 (the version that eliminates the backward-compatibility fallback path)
  3. Verify Content-Language header usage
    Search codebase for usages of 'Content-Language' header or i18next-http-middleware's language detection that writes to response headers
    Affected if The application uses language detection that writes to Content-Language header and passes user-supplied language values
  4. Check for language parameter handling
    Inspect code that handles language detection from incoming requests (query params, headers, cookies) and trace whether these values flow through to response headers without sanitization
    Affected if User-supplied language values from requests are used without stripping CRLF characters before being set as response headers

You are affected if i18next-http-middleware is below version 3.9.3 AND your application uses language detection that writes to Content-Language headers with user-supplied input, especially if i18next is also below 19.5.0.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Upgrade i18next-http-middleware to version 3.9.3 or later. Additionally, upgrading to i18next >= 19.5.0 is recommended to eliminate the backward-compatibility fallback path that exposes raw detected values.

Recommended fix High confidence

3.9.3

  1. Check the current version of i18next-http-middleware in your project dependencies (package.json)
  2. Update i18next-http-middleware to version 3.9.3 or later using your package manager (e.g., npm install [email protected] or yarn upgrade [email protected])
  3. Verify the upgrade was successful by running npm list i18next-http-middleware or checking installed version
  4. Test your application's language detection functionality to ensure the Content-Language header is set correctly

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

Have this fixed Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation2.0 h
  • Testing3.0 h
  • Review / QA1.0 h
8.0 hours of engineering $1,390
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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-41683 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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What belongs here
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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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