CVE-2026-47138

Parse Server: Pre-authentication denial of service via client version header regex backtracking

Description

Parse Server is an open source backend that can be deployed to any infrastructure that can run Node.js. Prior to versions 8.6.77 and 9.9.1-alpha.1, an unauthenticated attacker who knows a publicly-known Parse Application ID can submit a single HTTP request whose client SDK version field contains adversarial input that triggers polynomial backtracking in a request-header parser. The parsing runs before session authentication and before rate limiting on every /parse/* request, so the request consumes seconds to minutes of synchronous CPU on a Node.js worker before any access control evaluates it. A small number of concurrent requests can saturate a worker; a single large request via the body-field variant can pin a worker for minutes. Production deployments running the default configuration are affected. This issue has been patched in versions 8.6.77 and 9.9.1-alpha.1.

Scores

Weaknesses (CWE)

• CWE-1333

Advisories

• GHSA-38m6-82c8-4xfm — Parse Server: Pre-authentication denial of service via client version header regex backtracking

European references

• ENISA EUVD · EUVD-2026-36535
• GCVE · GCVE-0-2026-47138

Affected products

References

• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/security/advisories/GHSA-38m6-82c8-4xfm
• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/pull/10463
• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/pull/10464

Sources