vm2: GHSA-8hg8-63c5-gwmx patch bypass: nesting:true without explicit require still allows full RCE
28Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 10epss 0.4%
exploitation probability
0.4%top 69% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
vm2 is an open source vm/sandbox for Node.js. Prior to version 3.11.4, the fix for GHSA-8hg8-63c5-gwmx (CVE-2023-37903) introduced a check in nodevm.js line 263 that blocks the combination nesting: true + require: false. However, the check uses strict equality (options.require === false), which is trivially bypassed by omitting the require option entirely. When require is not specified, options.require is undefined, not false. The strict equality check fails, so the security guard is skipped. Immediately after (line 280), the destructuring default require: requireOpts = false assigns requireOpts = false, producing the exact configuration the patch was designed to prevent. This issue has been patched in version 3.11.4.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Affected products
patriksimek · vm2References
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-g644-9gfx-q4q4https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/commit/01a7552add345d5a6862623884e6b79a85bf0568https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/commit/86ab819f202c3a8dad88cef5705f2e416c5188d7https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/releases/tag/v3.11.4https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/security/advisories/GHSA-m4wx-m65x-ghrr