CVE-2026-40895 — follow-redirects: Custom Authentication Headers Leaked to Cross-Domain Redirect Targets

Description (CNA)

follow-redirects is an open source, drop-in replacement for Node's `http` and `https` modules that automatically follows redirects. Prior to 1.16.0, when an HTTP request follows a cross-domain redirect (301/302/307/308), follow-redirects only strips authorization, proxy-authorization, and cookie headers (matched by regex at index.js). Any custom authentication header (e.g., X-API-Key, X-Auth-Token, Api-Key, Token) is forwarded verbatim to the redirect target. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.16.0.

Affected (CNA)

Vendor / product	Versions
follow-redirects / follow-redirects	affected < 1.16.0

CWE

CWE-200

References

https://github.com/follow-redirects/follow-redirects/security/advisories/GHSA-r4q5-vmmm-2653

ADP enrichment

CISA-ADP

No English description supplied.

No references supplied.

redhat-SADP

A flaw was found in follow-redirects. When an HTTP request follows a cross-domain redirect (a redirection to a different domain), custom authentication headers, such as X-API-Key or X-Auth-Token, are not properly stripped. This allows these sensitive headers to be forwarded verbatim to the redirect target, potentially leading to the unintended disclosure of authentication information to an untrusted third party.