Electron's sandboxed renderers can obtain thumbnails of arbitrary files through the nativeImage API
Published 12 Oct 2021 · Updated 8 Jul 2026
Affected packages
- Affected
- <11.5.0
- Fixed in
- 11.5.0
npm install electron@11.5.0- Affected
- >=12.0.0 <12.1.0
- Fixed in
- 12.1.0
npm install electron@12.1.0- Affected
- >=13.0.0 <13.3.0
- Fixed in
- 13.3.0
npm install electron@13.3.0Details
Impact
This vulnerability allows a sandboxed renderer to request a "thumbnail" image of an arbitrary file on the user's system. The thumbnail can potentially include significant parts of the original file, including textual data in many cases.
All current stable versions of Electron are affected.
Patches
This was fixed with #30728, and the following Electron versions contain the fix:
- 15.0.0-alpha.10
- 14.0.0
- 13.3.0
- 12.1.0
- 11.5.0
Workarounds
If your app enables contextIsolation, this vulnerability is significantly more difficult for an attacker to exploit.
Further, if your app does not depend on the createThumbnailFromPath API, then you can simply disable the functionality. In the main process, before the 'ready' event:
delete require('electron').nativeImage.createThumbnailFromPathFor more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at [security@electronjs.org](mailto:security@electronjs.org).
Is GHSA-mpjm-v997-c4h4 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 electron, and gives you the command that fixes it.
References
Advisory data from OSV.dev (opens OSV.dev in a new tab), refreshed daily.