Security advisory
A vulnerability was found in the ping functionality of the ws module before 1.0.0 which allowed clients to allocate memory by sending a ping frame. The ping functionality by default responds with a pong frame and the previously given payload of the ping frame. This is exactly what you expect, but internally ws always transforms all data that we need to send to a Buffer instance and that is where the vulnerability existed. ws didn't do any checks for the type of data it was sending. With buffers in node when you allocate it when a number instead of a string it will allocate the amount of bytes.
- Products
- Not specified
- Affected versions
- Not specified
- Fixed versions
- Not specified
- CVEs
- CVE-2016-10518
- Confirmed fixed CVEs
- Not specified
- Updated in this feed
- 31 Oct 2026, 09:38 UTC · Revision 1
Source evidence
A vulnerability was found in the ping functionality of the ws module before 1.0.0 which allowed clients to allocate memory by sending a ping frame. The ping functionality by default responds with a pong frame and the previously given payload of the ping frame. This is exactly what you expect, but internally ws always transforms all data that we need to send to a Buffer instance and that is where the vulnerability existed. ws didn't do any checks for the type of data it was sending. With buffers in node when you allocate it when a number instead of a string it will allocate the amount of bytes.
osv:CVE-2016-10518
Complete source record
{
"id": "c12df59920a87a8d495f7b0b66f266d03988ed17dcfb421a6abefe3a3d264818",
"url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2016-10518",
"method": "structured",
"payload": {
"kind": "advisory",
"title": "CVE-2016-10518",
"summary": "A vulnerability was found in the ping functionality of the ws module before 1.0.0 which allowed clients to allocate memory by sending a ping frame. The ping functionality by default responds with a pong frame and the previously given payload of the ping frame. This is exactly what you expect, but internally ws always transforms all data that we need to send to a Buffer instance and that is where the vulnerability existed. ws didn't do any checks for the type of data it was sending. With buffers in node when you allocate it when a number instead of a string it will allocate the amount of bytes.",
"evidence": "osv:CVE-2016-10518",
"products": [],
"severity": "high",
"structured": {
"id": "CVE-2016-10518",
"aliases": [
"CVE-2016-10518",
"GHSA-2mhh-w6q8-5hxw"
],
"metrics": [
{
"type": "CVSS_V3",
"score": "CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N"
}
],
"affected": [
{
"ranges": [
{
"repo": "https://github.com/websockets/ws",
"type": "GIT",
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
},
{
"fixed": "40a9d686288b5d0be13f2bf2f3f5da07afc8cda2"
}
],
"database_specific": {
"extracted_events": [
{
"cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:ws_project:ws:*:*:*:*:*:node.js:*:*",
"range": [
{
"introduced": "0"
},
{
"fixed": "1.0.1"
}
],
"source": "CPE_RANGE"
},
{
"range": [
{
"fixed": "40a9d686288b5d0be13f2bf2f3f5da07afc8cda2"
}
],
"source": "REFERENCES_TAG",
"original_tag": "1.0.1"
}
]
}
}
],
"versions": [
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"0.8.1",
"0.8.0",
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"v0.3.5-3",
"v0.3.5-2",
"v0.3.5",
"v0.3.4-2",
"v0.3.4",
"v0.3.3",
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"v0.1.0",
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],
"database_specific": {
"source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2016-10518.json"
}
}
],
"modified": "2026-10-20T10:47:23.801638674Z",
"provider": "osv",
"references": [
"https://github.com/websockets/ws/releases/tag/1.0.1",
"https://nodesecurity.io/advisories/67",
"https://gist.github.com/c0nrad/e92005446c480707a74a"
],
"provider_metadata": {}
},
"related_cves": [
{
"value": "CVE-2016-10518",
"evidence": "/id"
}
],
"security_relevant": true,
"severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
},
"source_id": "core-osv",
"document_id": 379363,
"published_at": "2018-05-31T20:29:00.503+00:00"
}