SARA / Free Tools / CVE / CVE-2023-23918

CVE-2023-23918 — A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in Node

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in Node.js <19.6.1, <18.14.1, <16.19.1 and <14.21.3 that made it possible to bypass the experimental Permissions (https://nodejs.org/api/permissions.html) feature in Node.js and access non authorized modules by using process

CVSS
— —
EPSS
0.02% (top 94.80%)
CWE
—
Published
2023-02-23T00:00:00.000Z
Last modified
2025-05-08T16:15:23.012Z
CVSS vector
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01What is this vulnerability?

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in Node.js <19.6.1, <18.14.1, <16.19.1 and <14.21.3 that made it possible to bypass the experimental Permissions (https://nodejs.org/api/permissions.html) feature in Node.js and access non authorized modules by using process.mainModule.require(). This only affects users who had enabled the experimental permissions option with --experimental-policy.

02Affected products

VendorProductVersions
NodeJSNode4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0, 11.0, 12.0, 13.0, 14.0, 15.0, 16.0, 17.0, 18.0, 19.0

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

09References

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