SSRF in Node.js: How to Protect Your Applications

🔍 What is SSRF (Server-Side Request Forgery)?

SSRF is a critical security vulnerability where attackers trick your server into making requests to internal or external systems. In Node.js apps, a single vulnerable HTTP request can expose cloud metadata, internal services, or sensitive credentials. In other words, your server becomes the attacker.

// Vulnerable Node.js example
app.get('/fetch', async (req, res) => {
  const url = req.query.url;
  const data = await axios.get(url); // ❌ SSRF risk if unvalidated
  res.send(data);
});

🚨 Why SSRF in Node.js is Dangerous

• Access to internal microservices
• Exposure of cloud metadata endpoints (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Firewall and network ACL bypass
• Leaking environment secrets or tokens
• Potential lateral movement within private networks

🛡️ How to Prevent SSRF in Node.js

Manual validation of hostnames, IP ranges, and protocols is error-prone. The best approach is to use a dedicated security library designed to block SSRF vectors.

🚀 Node.js Usage Example

import { createSafeAgent } from "ssrf-agent-guard";
import axios from "axios";

const agent = createSafeAgent();

axios.get("http://example.com", { httpAgent: agent, httpsAgent: agent })
  .then(res => console.log(res.data))
  .catch(err => console.error("Blocked: ", err.message));

💡 Benefits of Using ssrf-agent-guard

• Zero configuration
• Compatible with Axios, Fetch, and Node core HTTP/HTTPS
• Actively maintained for modern Node.js environments
• Stops real-world SSRF attacks effectively

📌 Final Thoughts

SSRF is one of the most overlooked and dangerous vulnerabilities in modern backend systems. Protect your Node.js applications today using ssrf-agent-guard.

👉 Get ssrf-agent-guard on npm