CVE-2026-33397: Angular SSR Vulnerable to Protocol-Relative URL Injection via Single Backslash Bypass

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.1 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-03-26 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-601

Description

The Angular SSR is a server-rise rendering tool for Angular applications. Versions on the 22.x branch prior to 22.0.0-next.2, the 21.x branch prior to 21.2.3, and the 20.x branch prior to 20.3.21 have an Open Redirect vulnerability in `@angular/ssr` due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2026-27738. While the original fix successfully blocked multiple leading slashes (e.g., `///`), the internal validation logic fails to account for a single backslash (`\`) bypass. When an Angular SSR application is deployed behind a proxy that passes the `X-Forwarded-Prefix` header, an attacker provides a value starting with a single backslash, the internal validation failed to flag the single backslash as invalid, the application prepends a leading forward slash, resulting in a `Location` header containing the URL, and modern browsers interpret the `/\` sequence as `//`, treating it as a protocol-relative URL and redirecting the user to the attacker-controlled domain. Furthermore, the response lacks the `Vary: X-Forwarded-Prefix` header, allowing the malicious redirect to be stored in intermediate caches (Web Cache Poisoning). Versions 22.0.0-next.2, 21.2.3, and 20.3.21 contain a patch. Until the patch is applied, developers should sanitize the `X-Forwarded-Prefix` header in their `server.ts` before the Angular engine processes the request.

Affected products

angular-cli: from 20.0.0 before 20.3.21; from 21.0.0 before 21.2.3; 22.0.0-next0, 22.0.0-next1 — fixed in 20.3.21, 21.2.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: angular-cli 20.3.21, 21.2.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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