Morgan writes attacker-controlled request data to the access log through its tokens. The 1.11.0 fix neutralizes C0 control characters, DEL, and backslash, but it does not escape the Unicode line separators U+0085 (NEL), U+2028 (LINE SEPARATOR), or U+2029 (PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR). These code points are reachable through several tokens, including the request URL (:url), request headers such as :user-agent and :referrer, arbitrary :req[header] values, and the Basic auth username (:remote-user). NEL is valid obs-text in HTTP header values, so an attacker can place it in an ordinary request header.
When such a value is logged, the raw code points survive into the emitted access-log record, and downstream ECMAScript-aware or Unicode-aware log processing splits the single physical record into multiple logical records. This allows an attacker to forge log entries. The built-in combined, common, default, and short formats are affected, as well as any custom format. This is an incomplete fix of CVE-2026-5078.
Users should upgrade to version 1.12.0.
None. The affected values include the request URL and request headers, which are core to access logging, so there is no practical format-based mitigation. Upgrade to 1.12.0.
{
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-117"
],
"github_reviewed": true,
"github_reviewed_at": "2026-09-08T21:28:26Z",
"nvd_published_at": "2026-08-28T16:17:07Z",
"severity": "MODERATE"
}