What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-1537: file.copy operations in GruntJS are vulnerable to a TOCTOU race condition leading to arbitrary file write in gruntjs/grunt

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.0 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2022-05-10 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-367

Description

file.copy operations in GruntJS are vulnerable to a TOCTOU race condition leading to arbitrary file write in GitHub repository gruntjs/grunt prior to 1.5.3. This vulnerability is capable of arbitrary file writes which can lead to local privilege escalation to the GruntJS user if a lower-privileged user has write access to both source and destination directories as the lower-privileged user can create a symlink to the GruntJS user's .bashrc file or replace /etc/shadow file if the GruntJS user is root.

Affected products

• gruntjs/grunt: before 1.5.3 — fixed in 1.5.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: gruntjs/grunt 1.5.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt/commit/58016ffac5ed9338b63ecc2a63710f5027362bae
• https://huntr.dev/bounties/0179c3e5-bc02-4fc9-8491-a1a319b51b4d
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/04/msg00006.html
• https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt/commit/58016ffac5ed9338b63ecc2a63710f5027362bae
• https://huntr.dev/bounties/0179c3e5-bc02-4fc9-8491-a1a319b51b4d
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/04/msg00006.html

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