Path traversal in NPM - CVE-2019-16777
Published: December 12, 2019 / Updated: February 24, 2020
Vulnerability identifier: #VU23880
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4.0: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:A/VC:L/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Clear
CVE-ID: CVE-2019-16777
CWE-ID: CWE-22
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vendor: isaacs
Affected software:
NPM
NPM
Detailed vulnerability description
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform directory traversal attacks.
The vulnerability exists due to input validation error when processing directory traversal sequences. The software fails to prevent existing globally-installed binaries to be overwritten by other package installations. For example, if a package was installed globally and created a serve binary, any subsequent installs of packages that also create a serve binary would overwrite the first binary. This only affects files in /usr/local/bin
A remote attacker can overwrite arbitrary files on the system.
How to mitigate CVE-2019-16777
Install update from vendor's website.