What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2019-16777: Arbitrary File Overwrite in npm CLI

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2019-12-13 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Versions of the npm CLI prior to 6.13.4 are vulnerable to an Arbitrary File Overwrite. It 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 previous serve binary. This behavior is still allowed in local installations and also through install scripts. This vulnerability bypasses a user using the --ignore-scripts install option.

Affected products

• Fedoraproject Fedora: 31
• Npmjs Npm: before 6.13.4 — fixed in 6.13.4
• openSUSE Leap: 15.1
• Oracle Corporation GraalVM Enterprise Edition: 19.3.0.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 8.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Eus: 8.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Npmjs Npm 6.13.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-01/msg00027.html
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2020:0330
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2020:0573
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2020:0579
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2020:0597
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2020:0602
• https://blog.npmjs.org/post/189618601100/binary-planting-with-the-npm-cli
• https://github.com/npm/cli/security/advisories/GHSA-4328-8hgf-7wjr
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/Z36UKPO5F3PQ3Q2POMF5LEKXWAH5RUFP/
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202003-48
• https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpujan2020.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-01/msg00027.html

Get alerted when CVE-2019-16777 or the next vulnerability affects your stack