fix(deps): update dependency @apollo/server to v4.13.0 [security]#532

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renovate bot commented Feb 4, 2026

This PR contains the following updates:

Package	Change	Age	Confidence
@apollo/server (source)	`4.9.3` → `4.13.0`

GitHub Vulnerability Alerts

CVE-2026-23897

Impact

The default configuration of startStandaloneServer from @apollo/server/standalone is vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks through specially crafted request bodies with exotic character set encodings.

This issue does not affect users that use @apollo/server as a dependency for integration packages, like @as integrations/express5 or @as-integrations/next, only direct usage of startStandaloneServer.

Who is impacted

Users directly using startStandaloneServer from @apollo/server/standalone.

This issue affects Apollo Server from v5.0.0 through v5.3.x.

It also affects all releases of the end-of-life major versions v4, v3, and v2. Although Apollo Server v4 is EOL and Apollo no longer commits to providing support or updates for it, a fix for it was released in v4.13.0. Apollo Server v3 and v2 are no longer updated, as they have been EOL since 2024 and 2023 respectively.

Patches

Patches for this issue are released as @apollo/server versions 5.4.0 and 4.13.0.

In accordance with RFC 7159, these versions now only accept request bodies encoded in UTF-8, UTF-16 (LE or BE), or UTF-32 (LE or BE). Any other character set will be rejected with a 415 Unsupported Media Type error. Note that the more recent JSON RFC, [RFC 8259 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8259#section-8.1), is more strict and will only allow UTF-8. Since this is a minor release, we have chosen to remain compatible with the more permissive RFC 7159 for now. In a future major release, the restriction may be tightened further to only allow UTF-8.

Workarounds

Users of apollo-server v2 or v3 that cannot upgrade for some reason could switch from the standalone apollo-server
package to an integration package like apollo-server-express or apollo-server-koa and set up their own server. Please note that these old packages are generally EOL and do not receive any more support or bug fixes. This can only be seen as a short-term workaround. Updating to @apollo/server v5 should be a priority.

Release Notes

apollographql/apollo-server (@apollo/server)

`v4.13.0`

Minor Changes

#8180 e9d49d1 Thanks @github-actions! - ⚠️ SECURITY @apollo/server/standalone:

The default configuration of startStandaloneServer was vulnerable to denial of service (DoS) attacks through specially crafted request bodies with exotic character set encodings.

In accordance with RFC 7159, we now only accept request bodies encoded in UTF-8, UTF-16 (LE or BE), or UTF-32 (LE or BE).
Any other character set will be rejected with a 415 Unsupported Media Type error.
Additionally, upstream libraries used by this version of Apollo Server may not support all of these encodings, so some requests may still fail even if they pass this check.

If you were not using startStandaloneServer, you were not affected by this vulnerability.

Generally, please note that we provide startStandaloneServer as a convenience tool for quickly getting started with Apollo Server.
For production deployments, we recommend using Apollo Server with a more fully-featured web server framework such as Express, Koa, or Fastify, where you have more control over security-related configuration options.

Also please note that Apollo Server 4.x is considered EOL as of January 26, 2026, and Apollo no longer commits to providing support or updates for it. Please prioritize migrating to Apollo Server 5.x for continued support and updates.

`v4.12.2`

(No change; there is a change to the @apollo/server-integration-testsuite used to test integrations, and the two packages always have matching versions.)

`v4.12.1`

Patch Changes

#8064 41f98d4 Thanks @glasser! - Update README.md to recommend Express v5 integration now that Express v5 is released.

`v4.12.0`

Minor Changes

#8054 89e3f84 Thanks @clenfest! - Adds a new graphql-js validation rule to reject operations that recursively request selections above a specified maximum, which is disabled by default. Use configuration option maxRecursiveSelections=true to enable with a maximum of 10,000,000, or maxRecursiveSelections=<number> for a custom maximum. Enabling this validation can help avoid performance issues with configured validation rules or plugins.

Patch Changes

#8031 2550d9f Thanks @slagiewka! - Add return after sending 400 response in doubly escaped JSON parser middleware

`v4.11.3`

Patch Changes

#8010 f4228e8 Thanks @glasser! - Compatibility with Next.js Turbopack. Fixes #8004.

`v4.11.2`

(No change; there is a change to the @apollo/server-integration-testsuite used to test integrations, and the two packages always have matching versions.)

`v4.11.1`

Patch Changes

#7952 bb81b2c Thanks @glasser! - Upgrade dependencies so that automated scans don't detect a vulnerability.

@apollo/server depends on express which depends on cookie. Versions of express older than v4.21.1 depend on a version of cookie vulnerable to CVE-2024-47764. Users of older express versions who call res.cookie() or res.clearCookie() may be vulnerable to this issue.

However, Apollo Server does not call this function directly, and it does not expose any object to user code that allows TypeScript users to call this function without an unsafe cast.

The only way that this direct dependency can cause a vulnerability for users of Apollo Server is if you call startStandaloneServer with a context function that calls Express-specific methods such as res.cookie() or res.clearCookies() on the response object, which is a violation of the TypeScript types provided by startStandaloneServer (which only promise that the response object is a core Node.js http.ServerResponse rather than the Express-specific subclass). So this vulnerability can only affect Apollo Server users who use unsafe JavaScript or unsafe as typecasts in TypeScript.

However, this upgrade will at least prevent vulnerability scanners from alerting you to this dependency, and we encourage all Express users to upgrade their project's own express dependency to v4.21.1 or newer.

`v4.11.0`

Minor Changes

#7916 4686454 Thanks @andrewmcgivery! - Add hideSchemaDetailsFromClientErrors option to ApolloServer to allow hiding 'did you mean' suggestions from validation errors.

Even with introspection disabled, it is possible to "fuzzy test" a graph manually or with automated tools to try to determine the shape of your schema. This is accomplished by taking advantage of the default behavior where a misspelt field in an operation
will be met with a validation error that includes a helpful "did you mean" as part of the error text.

For example, with this option set to true, an error would read Cannot query field "help" on type "Query". whereas with this option set to false it would read Cannot query field "help" on type "Query". Did you mean "hello"?.

We recommend enabling this option in production to avoid leaking information about your schema to malicious actors.

To enable, set this option to true in your ApolloServer options:
```
const server = new ApolloServer({
  typeDefs,
  resolvers,
  hideSchemaDetailsFromClientErrors: true,
});
```

`v4.10.5`

Patch Changes

#7821 b2e15e7 Thanks @renovate! - Non-major dependency updates
#7900 86d7111 Thanks @trevor-scheer! - Inline a small dependency that was causing build issues for ESM projects

`v4.10.4`

Patch Changes

#7871 18a3827 Thanks @tninesling! - Subscription heartbeats are initialized prior to awaiting subscribe(). This allows long-running setup to happen in the returned Promise without the subscription being terminated prior to resolution.

`v4.10.3`

Patch Changes

#7866 5f335a5 Thanks @tninesling! - Catch errors thrown by subscription generators, and gracefully clean up the subscription instead of crashing.

`v4.10.2`

Patch Changes

#7849 c7e514c Thanks @TylerBloom! - In the subscription callback server plugin, terminating a subscription now immediately closes the internal async generator. This avoids that generator existing after termination and until the next message is received.

`v4.10.1`

Patch Changes

#7843 72f568e Thanks @bscherlein! - Improves timing of the willResolveField end hook on fields which return Promises resolving to Arrays. This makes the use of the setCacheHint method more reliable.

`v4.10.0`

Minor Changes

#7786 869ec98 Thanks @ganemone! - Restore missing v1 skipValidation option as dangerouslyDisableValidation. Note that enabling this option exposes your server to potential security and unexpected runtime issues. Apollo will not support issues that arise as a result of using this option.
#7803 e9a0d6e Thanks @favna! - allow stringifyResult to return a Promise<string>

Users who implemented the stringifyResult hook can now expect error responses to be formatted with the hook as well. Please take care when updating to this version to ensure this is the desired behavior, or implement the desired behavior accordingly in your stringifyResult hook. This was considered a non-breaking change as we consider that it was an oversight in the original PR that introduced stringifyResult hook.

Patch Changes

#7793 9bd7748 Thanks @bnjjj! - General availability of subscription callback protocol
#7799 63dc50f Thanks @stijnbe! - Fix type of ApolloServerPluginUsageReporting reportTimer
#7740 fe68c1b Thanks @barnisanov! - Uninstalled body-parser and used express built-in body-parser functionality instead(mainly the json middleware)

`v4.9.5`

Patch Changes

#7741 07585fe39 Thanks @mayakoneval! - Pin major releases of embeddable Explorer & Sandbox code.
#7769 4fac1628c Thanks @cwikla! - Change SchemaReporter.pollTimer from being a NodeJS.Timer to a NodeJS.Timeout

`v4.9.4`

Patch Changes

#7747 ddce036e1 Thanks @trevor-scheer! - The minimum version of graphql officially supported by Apollo Server 4 as a peer dependency, v16.6.0, contains a serious bug that can crash your Node server. This bug is fixed in the immediate next version, graphql@16.7.0, and we strongly encourage you to upgrade your installation of graphql to at least v16.7.0 to avoid this bug. (For backwards compatibility reasons, we cannot change Apollo Server 4's minimum peer dependency, but will change it when we release Apollo Server 5.)

Apollo Server 4 contained a particular line of code that makes triggering this crashing bug much more likely. This line was already removed in Apollo Server v3.8.2 (see #6398) but the fix was accidentally not included in Apollo Server 4. We are now including this change in Apollo Server 4, which will reduce the likelihood of hitting this crashing bug for users of graphql v16.6.0. That said, taking this @apollo/server upgrade does not prevent this bug from being triggered in other ways, and the real fix to this crashing bug is to upgrade graphql.

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          fix(deps): update dependency @apollo/server to v4.13.0 [security]

bb27d85

renovate bot force-pushed the renovate/npm-apollo-server-vulnerability branch from efe6f09 to bb27d85 Compare

February 12, 2026 18:02

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