Vulnerability Intelligence Report
Headroom vulnerable to Cross-Site WebSocket Hijacking (CSWSH)
CVE-2026-71416
Headroom compresses data before the data reaches a large language model. Prior to version 0.35.0, the Headroom WebSocket server does not validate the `Origin` header of incoming client WebSocket requests before forwarding the request to the upstream server, allowing malicious WebSocket clients to perform arbitrary LLM requests without authentication. This can be exploited by a malicious WebSocket client executed in a traditional or headless browser such as lightpanda, if the browser has access to the Headroom proxy and the OpenAI API key is stored in the `OPENAI_API_KEY` environment variable. Version 0.35.0 fixes the issue.
Authentication Bypass
No Active Exploit Signals
CVSS Base Score
8.8
HIGH
Exploitability:2.9
Impact Score:5.9
Executive Threat Verdict
Evaluating...
Evaluating Threat Landscape...
Assessing known weaponization, exploitation telemetry, and federal advisories.
Attack Surface
—
Authentication
—
Weaponization
—
SSVC Action
—
Weaknesses (CWE)
CWE-287 ↗CWE-287: Improper Authentication
CWE-1385 ↗CWE-1385: Missing Origin Validation in WebSockets
Affected Products & Versions
| Vendor | Product | Affected Versions |
|---|---|---|
| headroomlabs-ai | headroom | < 0.35.0 (affected) |
References & Technical Advisories
No reference links found.
Threat Intelligence Signals
Vulnerability Class
Authentication Bypass
Identity & Timeline
| Status | PUBLISHED |
| Assigning Authority | GitHub, Inc. · Vendor · USA |
| Reserved | 2026-08-06T16:28:51 |
| Published | 2026-09-11T13:34:38 |
| Last Updated | 2026-09-11T14:33:18 |
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