StackPrism

npm package

ws 8.18.1 vulnerabilities, and the version that fixes all of them

ws 8.18.1 has 2 known vulnerabilities (1 rated high or critical); 8.21.0 fixes all of them.

npm (opens in a new tab) describes it as “Simple to use, blazing fast and thoroughly tested websocket client and server for Node.js”

Known vulnerabilities
2
1 rated high or critical
Released
Feb 21, 2025
Latest is 8.22.0
Downloads last week
1.3M
Under 1% of ws downloads
Licence
MIT
OpenSSF Scorecard
5.5/10
websockets/ws (opens in a new tab)
Dependencies
None
Resolved by deps.dev

What to upgrade to

8.21.0 is the closest release with no known vulnerabilities.

  • 8.21.0Upgrade to this

    Fixes all 2 known vulnerabilities. Released May 22, 2026.

    No known vulnerabilities

  • 8.22.0

    Newest 8.x release and the latest release. Released Sep 26, 2026.

    No known vulnerabilities

8.21.0 came out on May 22, 2026. A coding agent trained before then doesn’t know it exists, so it may suggest an older release. AI knowledge cutoff dates

Hand the fix to your coding agent

One task with the upgrade, the file to change and why. Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor or Codex.

Findings

Every advisory for ws 8.18.1

Known exploited first (CISA KEV), then by how likely they are to be exploited (FIRST EPSS), then by severity. Each id links to its OSV.dev record.

  1. CriticalCVE-2026-48779 on OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)GHSA-96hv-2xvq-fx4pEPSS: top 41%

    ws: Memory exhaustion DoS from tiny fragments and data chunks

    Fixed in 8.21.0. Published Jun 15, 2026.

  2. WarningCVE-2026-45736 on OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)GHSA-58qx-3vcg-4xpxEPSS: top 49%

    ws: Uninitialized memory disclosure

    Fixed in 8.20.1. Published May 18, 2026.

Who is still on a vulnerable ws

33% of last week’s 287.7M ws downloads went to versions with known vulnerabilities.

From npm’s per-version download counts for the last 7 days, each version checked against OSV.dev. The versions checked cover over 99% of downloads.

Is ws the only one?

Paste a public GitHub repo or drop your package.json and see every vulnerable, end-of-life or deprecated dependency, with one fix task. Free, no sign-up.

Check your whole repo

How this page is checked

StackPrism asks OSV.dev which advisories affect exactly ws 8.18.1, merges duplicates filed under several ids, and ranks them with CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list and FIRST EPSS. Release dates and deprecation come from deps.dev and npm. No AI writes this page: every sentence comes from that data, refreshed every few hours.

Last checked against npm, OSV.dev, deps.dev, CISA KEV and FIRST EPSS.